Earth Girl
Janet Edwards
A sensational YA science fiction debut. Jarra is stuck on Earth while the rest of humanity portals around the universe. But can she prove to the norms that she’s more than just an Earth Girl?
2788. Only the handicapped live on Earth. While everyone else portals between worlds, 18-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Sent to Earth at birth to save her life, she has been abandoned by her parents. She can’t travel to other worlds, but she can watch their vids, and she knows all the jokes they make. She’s an ‘ape’, a ‘throwback’, but this is one ape girl who won’t give in.
Jarra invents a fake background for herself – as a normal child of Military parents – and joins a class of norms that is on Earth to excavate the ruins of the old cities. When an ancient skyscraper collapses, burying another research team, Jarra’s role in their rescue puts her in the spotlight. No hiding at back of class now. To make life more complicated, she finds herself falling in love with one of her classmates – a norm from another planet. Somehow, she has to keep the deception going.
A freak solar storm strikes the atmosphere, and the class is ordered to portal off-world for safety – no problem for a real child of military parents, but fatal for Jarra. The storm is so bad that the crews of the orbiting solar arrays have to escape to planet below: the first landing from space in 600 years. And one is on collision course with their shelter.
JANET EDWARDS
Earth Girl
Table of Contents
Title Page (#ua26c447d-2FFF-11e9-bcb1-0cc47a5203ba)
Chapter 1 (#ua26c447d-4FFF-11e9-bcb1-0cc47a5203ba)
Chapter 2 (#ua26c447d-5FFF-11e9-bcb1-0cc47a5203ba)
Chapter 3 (#ua26c447d-6FFF-11e9-bcb1-0cc47a5203ba)
Chapter 4 (#ua26c447d-7FFF-11e9-bcb1-0cc47a5203ba)
Chapter 5 (#ua26c447d-8FFF-11e9-bcb1-0cc47a5203ba)
Chapter 6 (#ua26c447d-9FFF-11e9-bcb1-0cc47a5203ba)
Chapter 7 (#ua26c447d-10FF-11e9-bcb1-0cc47a5203ba)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Read an extract from Earth Star (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
1
It was on Wallam-Crane day that I finally decided what I was going to do for my degree course Foundation year. I’d had a mail about it from Issette that morning. It showed her jumping up and down on her bed in her sleep suit, waving a pillow, and singing: ‘Make your mind up, Jarra! Do it! Do it! Make up, make up, make up your mind girl!’ She was singing it to the tune of the new song by Zen Arrath. Issette is totally powered on him, but I don’t think much of his legs.
Issette is my best friend. We’re both 17 and we’d been in Nursery together, and had neighbouring rooms all through Home and Next Step. She’d put in her application for the Medical Foundation course months ago. Issette is organized and reliable. I’m not. Most of my other friends had made their decisions too, except for Keon who was planning to do absolutely nothing. He’d been doing that all through school and I had to admit he was good at it.
I didn’t fancy being another Keon, so I had to decide what to do, and I had to do it fast. The deadline for applying for courses was the day after the holiday.
Wallam-Crane day is a holiday on Earth, just like on all the other worlds, but in the circumstances we don’t have celebration parties the way they do. Thaddeus Wallam-Crane invented the portal and gave humanity the stars, but we on Earth are the one in a thousand who missed out when he created the ticket to the universe.
One of my private fantasies is inventing a time machine and travelling back in time nearly six hundred and fifty years to 15 November 2142. I would then strangle Wallam-Crane at birth. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be normal instead of labelled a nean, a throwback. Yes, I’m one of them. The polite people would call me Handicapped, but you can call me ape girl if you like. The name doesn’t change anything. My immune system can’t survive anywhere other than Earth. I’m in prison, and it’s a life sentence.
If you’re still scanning this, I expect it’s just out of shock that an ape girl can write. ‘Amaz! Totally zan!’ you will cry to your friends in disbelief, but you know that I’m just the same as you really. It could have been you here on Earth, and me travelling between worlds, if only the dice had fallen differently. When you have a baby, it could turn out like I did, and have to be portalled to Earth in minutes or it dies.
My psychologist says you people are scared of us. He says that’s why you call us names and have your little superstitions. We see it all on the vids. Portalling between worlds late in pregnancy turns the baby into a nean. Don’t eat Karanth jelly when you’re pregnant or the baby will be an ape. The latest scare is plastered all over the newzies, and everyone throws out their Karanth jelly, and it makes no difference at all.
It’s all rubbish. The best scientists have been researching this for hundreds of years and they still don’t have a clue. Every other handicap can be screened out or fixed, but not this one. Whether you eat Karanth jelly or not, it can get your baby just the same way it got me. Maybe they’ll find a cure one day, but with my luck I bet I’m dead by then. I expect I’ll die the day beforehand, so fate can enjoy a last big laugh at my expense.
My psychologist also says I still have a lot of unresolved bitterness and anger. He’s right. You’ve probably already noticed it. I was feeling especially bitter on 15 November 2788. I was due to meet Candace in half an hour and tell her my decision on my course, my career, my whole future life. I still hadn’t made up my mind, and really needed to do some hard thinking. Naturally, I was avoiding doing that by watching the vid.
The vid info channels were all packed with special anniversary programmes. Half of them were showing that old footage of the first experiment that everyone has seen a thousand times. Wallam-Crane smirks at the camera and says: ‘One small step for a man, one giant leap for humanity.’ Do you know he stole that line from the first moon landing? Do you even know that they went to the moon by rocket long before they portalled there? Probably not. Well, that’s a fascinating bit of pre-history for you, totally free of education tax.
The rest of the info channels were either showing bits about the first interstellar portals, or the Exodus century that emptied Earth. I switched to the vid ent channels, but they were all showing vid stars getting drunk or powered at huge parties. I spotted the male lead out of that new vid series Defenders. Arrack San Domex. Now there’s a man with good legs. I’m a big fan of those scenes where he’s looking sexy and heroic in his tight-fitting Military uniform, saving humanity from the mythical menacing aliens that we still haven’t discovered. I stopped a moment to listen.
‘… great tragedy that genius Thaddeus Wallam-Crane died so young, before he could even portal to another planet himse …’
I turned off the vid before Arrack could demonstrate his stupidity any further. Nice legs, not much on the brain cells. I shouted my frustration at the blank screen. ‘Don’t you know that the genius was already 64 when he got that first portal working? He didn’t die young; he lived to celebrate his hundredth! It took them another hundred years before anyone portalled to another habitable planet. Work out how old he would have needed to be to go there, nardle brain!’
It annoys me so much when people don’t know their history. I have a passion for facts and …
Yes, I admit it. I’d known what course I’d take all along. You’ve probably already seen I’m a natural historian. I was just rebelling against it because being a historian is like giving in to what fate has done to me. Everyone knows Earth is for the triple H: Hospital. History. Handicapped. There are other careers you can follow on Earth – we need the entire infrastructure any world has – but our two big speciality areas are medicine and history.
So it boiled down to this. I could be a dutiful stereotype Handicapped and become a historian, or I could rebel by not studying something I loved. Great choice. Then I thought of a third possibility. I could do it if I was crazy enough or angry enough. I was grinning like a maniac as I went out of my room and headed down to the portal in the entrance hall.
I met Candace in the huge tropical bird dome of Zoo Europe. They have an even bigger one in Zoo Africa of course, but cross continent portalling is more expensive than local and you hit time zone problems. You probably didn’t know that, since Earth is the only world with more than one inhabited continent. Another tax-free fact for you.
Candace was sitting on the bench by the guppy pool. I sat next to her, and for a moment we just watched the tiny shimmering crimson, electric blue, and emerald tails of the male guppies as they showed off to the drab females. Overhead, there were flashes of iridescent feathers from birds in flight. I loved this place, with its rampaging plants, humid jungle smells, and the constant bird song. Candace and I had been meeting here for years and I still never tired of it.
‘So, I suppose you’re still thinking things over,’ Candace said. ‘I hate to nag, but we have to get your application in by tomorrow.’
‘You can nag,’ I said. ‘You’re my ProMum. It’s your job.’
I bet you’ve never heard of a ProMum. ProParents are what you get if your real parents don’t want to know about a Handicapped baby. In 92 per cent of cases, it takes parents less than a day to register consent to make their embarrassing throwback a ward of Hospital Earth, give notice to dissolve their marriage or other relationship, and head in opposite directions while each screaming the throwback genes belonged to the other party.
My parents were in the 92 per cent. I’d had the right to attempt contact with them when I was 14, but I hadn’t bothered. The exos threw me away, and I sure as chaos wasn’t chasing after them and begging!
I used the exo word there. Us apes call people like you ‘norms’ when we’re being polite, and ‘exos’ when we’re not. I don’t feel I have to be polite about parents who dumped me.
I mentioned that my psychologist thinks I still have a lot of unresolved bitterness and anger, didn’t I?
Instead of parents, I have Candace for two hours a week. She is ProMum to ten of us. I don’t know who the others are and I don’t want to. I also don’t want to know about her own kids. She must have experienced at least one serious relationship, and have at least one child of her own, because it’s a prerequisite for being a ProParent.
So, I know about all the kids who are my competition, but I prefer to ignore them and think of Candace as being mine and mine alone. She may only be mine for two hours a week, but unlike all the other adults that come and go in my life, Candace is two hours a week for ever. ProParents are for life. She’ll be there to advise me when I get into a relationship, or have kids of my own, or strangle Wallam-Crane at birth. I have a ProDad too, and he was great until I got to be about 11. Since then we haven’t got on so well.
I’ve run into a couple of the kids with real parents who moved to Earth to take care of them. I think I prefer ProParents really. They only bother to make you do something if it’s really important, and if you’re in trouble they’re like superheroes. I mean, seriously, they have huge powers. If they suspect one of their kids is being badly treated, ProParents can wade in, claim advocate authority, and get Homes inspected, closed, anything they want. They can walk right into the board meeting of Hospital Earth if they feel it’s necessary. Now that really is totally zan!
It’s always been nice to know Candace had that sort of power and was on my side. I’d never needed her to use her authority before, but given what I was planning I might need it now.
It was time to break the news to her. I took it by gentle stages. ‘I want to go history, so I need to start with Pre-history Foundation Year.’
‘Well done,’ said Candace. ‘You’ve been working towards it for years, and it’s obviously right for you, but the way you’ve been delaying the decision had me worried. I was afraid you’d have one of your moods and bite off your own nose by choosing something else. I’ve got your application ready; we just need to submit it.’
‘It could be a bit more complicated than that,’ I said. ‘I want to apply to an off-world university.’
Candace closed her eyes for a few seconds. I swear she even stopped breathing. Finally she opened her eyes again. ‘We aren’t going back to the denial phase are we? You went through the whole thing about how they must have made a mistake in your case, just like all the kids do. You elected to take up your option to portal off world on your fourteenth birthday. You went into anaphylactic shock, the medical team shipped you back, and you took a week to recover. Surely you remember that.’
‘Yes,’ I said. I’d been dying. I’d been terrified. It wasn’t something I’d ever forget.
‘Then you know it’s not a mistake. If you go off world, you’ll die. You can’t go to an off-world university!’
‘But I don’t have to go off world.’ I grinned crazily. ‘All Pre-history Foundation Year courses are held on Earth. I can transfer back to University Earth after that for the main degree.’
She tried all the sensible arguments. ‘University Earth does exactly the same Foundation course. They use the same facilities, the same dig sites, and the teaching is as good or better.’
I kept grinning. ‘I want a course run by an off-world university.’
‘You’re guaranteed to get a place on a University Earth course. You need the right grades to get on an off-world course.’
‘I have great grades, you know that.’
‘What about cost? Any education you want is free here but …’
Yes, I get educated free. Are you jealous? Being an ape has certain advantages. We get guaranteed places to study anything we want, and we never have to pay education tax at the end of it. We get a guaranteed job in whatever field we like. If we don’t want to work we have a guaranteed basic income. That’s how my friend Keon was planning to live – by lazing around for the rest of his life. Every inhabited world contributes generously to care for the rejects of humanity. It’s guilt money to ease their consciences. You lot pay up, so you can dump your reject babies on Earth and then forget about them.
‘Does it actually say anywhere that my free education is limited to University Earth and not any other university?’ I asked.
‘I’ll have to check. No one has ever thought it relevant so …’ Candace was clearly cracking in the face of my determination. ‘You do realize that the other students will be … difficult. They may not like you being on their course. Is that the idea? You want to vent your anger?’
‘That’s not the idea. Not to start with anyway. I don’t want them to know what I am. I want them to think I’m one of them. Normal.’
‘You are normal, Jarra. If you’d been born before the invention of the portal, no one would ever have known there was a problem with your immune system.’
This fact was recited to me regularly. I was normal. I wasn’t to think of myself as a reject. I was to value myself. All the irritating repetition achieved was to make me briefly try fantasizing about being born six hundred years ago. Then I remembered all the wars and famines in pre-history, decided I preferred modern civilization, and went back to fantasizing about strangling Wallam-Crane.
I shook my head at Candace. ‘People keep saying that to me. My psychologist says it, you say it, but you’re Handicapped too so it doesn’t help. I need the normal people to say it. I want to go on this course and have the real people think I’m one of them. It doesn’t matter if I don’t manage it for a whole year, even a few days would work. That would really mean I’m worth something.’
There was more to it than that. At the end, when I’d fooled them all into thinking I was a real person like them, then I was planning to tell them what I was. One of the neans, one of the people whose existence they ignored, had forced herself into their cosy little lives. I could watch the shock and embarrassment in their eyes, when they realized they’d been fooled into thinking a throwback was one of them. I could yell at them, let out all the anger and resentment, and walk away laughing. It didn’t seem a bright idea to tell Candace about that bit of my plan though.
‘If this would help you value yourself at last …’ Candace sat there thinking this through. ‘It would be hard to fool the other students, Jarra, but you won’t even get the chance to try. Your application will come from an Earth school, and they’ll know what that means. Children born here without the condition commute to off-world schools, and their applications come from those.’
Yes, I know you’re staggering at the thought of the expense of portalling between worlds every day just to go to school. It’s true though. Even if both parents are Handicapped, nine out of ten of their kids will be able to portal off world. The guilt money of humanity pays for them to portal to normal schools to aid their assimilation into ‘real society’.
Did you know, at one time they tried swapping babies? They took away the normal baby of Handicapped parents and gave them a Handicapped baby from off-world instead. They did it by force. I bet they never taught you that in your off-world school. My psychologist says I should forget about it because it generates hostility, but you shouldn’t forget history; you should learn from it.
‘The staff may know,’ I said, ‘but that’s my personal data!’
‘You’re right!’ Candace was in ProMum mode now, fighting for her kid’s rights. ‘Staff can only access personal data for professional purposes. Your school’s planet of origin implies your handicap; therefore it has the same protection status as medical data. We can make that clear on your application. The staff may know, but it’s professional misconduct if they tell the students. What university do we go for?’
‘Errr … Asgard.’ I picked it at random because it was the home planet of that nardle-brained vid star I had a crush on. Arrack San Domex. The one with the legs.
‘Asgard …’ Candace took her lookup from her pocket and typed a question. Data flooded the screen and she nodded. ‘That’s a high-rated history department. Good choice.’
It was, was it? ‘Are my grades good enough? Will I get in? Should I pick somewhere easier?’
‘You have great grades, Jarra, and your relevant experience section can’t be beaten. You’ve visited more history sites in a year than their other applicants will have visited in their life time. I’d bet most of them have never even set foot on Earth. If they turn you down, they had better be able to prove every student on that course has better grades or I’ll file a legal challenge from Hospital Earth on behalf of their ward.’
‘Yay!’ I just love having a ProMum with super powers on my side.
‘As for the cost … It won’t be more than if you go to University Earth. If anyone argues, then I’ll take it as high as necessary to get it authorized.’
I got a lot more than my statutory two hours of Candace that day, because we sent off my application. When University Asgard got back to work after the holiday, they were going to have a shock waiting for them. They were the first off-world university to ever get an application from an ape student, and they were going to have to accept me or Candace would go legal and tear them to shreds.
2
In the end, I didn’t tell any of my friends about University Asgard, not even Issette. Asgard might find a way to wriggle out of accepting me, and then I’d look a nardle. I just said I was going history, and they assumed the rest. Anyway, everyone’s attention was on Keon’s startling news.
Would you believe it? Keon calmly told us he had actually applied for a course in Foundation Art! The other eight of us from our Next Step were stunned that the legendarily lazy Keon Tanaka had applied for a course at all, and totally grazzed that he’d chosen something as commercial as art.
‘Well there’s lots of money in it …’ said Ross. ‘But you need to be able to paint, or sculpt, or light, or something to be an artist. Whatever you make has to be good.’
‘You know, there were times in history when that wasn’t true,’ I told them.
They all groaned. ‘No!’ said Issette. ‘No history lesson. Bad, bad, Jarra!’
‘Art mustn’t be good,’ said Keon. ‘It has to be mediocre. That’s the whole point. People pay a lot to have real art in their home, something unique that’s totally created by human hands. It has to be good enough to look at, but bad enough that it’s obviously not one of a hundred thousand manufactured copies of a brilliant original art work.’
‘Yes, but can you even manage mediocre?’ asked Cathan. He was looking a bit offended, since he was going art himself and took it seriously. He saw it as a secure, high-earning career, and had already researched how Earth artists sold their work via off-world agents to hide the fact it had been created by an ape.
I was tempted to ask if Cathan could manage mediocre either, but I was good and kept quiet. Things were edgy between me and Cathan. We’d got a bit boy and girlish at the beginning of the year, starting at the big Year Day party of course. The relationship only lasted a couple of months and it was mostly arguments. Cathan had nice legs, but was so sensitive. He threw tantrums if I didn’t mail him every two hours, and he didn’t like the amount of time I spent watching history info vids. I’d lose my temper too, because I had a right to do stuff I liked, and … Well, Cathan still had a few grudges about it.
Keon shrugged. ‘Maybe I won’t even go to the classes. I found out I’d get more money as a student than just on basic maintenance so …’
All of us laughed except Cathan.
Everyone forgot about applications then. There wasn’t any suspense as far as my friends were concerned, since they were guaranteed places on their chosen courses at University Earth. I was a nervous wreck though. I’d been scanning stuff about University Asgard. There was a lot of competition for places on their courses, especially history, and they’d be trying to find every reason they could to reject an ape girl.
If they rejected me … Well, Candace could go legal at them, but forcing my way in with a lot of publicity was no good. Everyone would know what I was, and the whole point was to fool them, and see their faces when they found out the truth. Maybe I should have been sensible and applied to University Earth as well, but it was too late to be thinking of that. I could only hope that if necessary, Candace would throw her ProMum weight around and get me a place there.
We were due to get the mails about our degree courses on 1 December. I spent all day waiting to hear from University Asgard, nerves jumping every time a mail arrived. Mostly I flipped through vid channels, but I couldn’t even concentrate on an episode of Defenders. By the evening, I was furious. They hadn’t even bothered to reject me! I sent Candace a mail telling her exactly what I thought of off-worlders. She sent me a mail back saying the inhabited continent of Asgard was in a time zone eleven hours behind us, and they hadn’t had breakfast yet.
Have you ever felt really stupid? I had no excuse at all. We have enough time zones on Earth. The everyday stuff we portal to is all local and in a similar time zone, but some of our school trips had set off in the middle of the night so that we would arrive in daylight at the other end. I’m a nardle brain. Nardle, nardle, nardle …
My mail from University Asgard came five hours later. They’d accepted me! They didn’t sound ecstatic about it, and there was a special note about how they couldn’t make any non-standard arrangements to allow for my disability, but I didn’t care. I danced round my room in victory.
The special note was designed to worry me, but it didn’t. They couldn’t do anything to stop me taking part in all the classes. There was a shakeup in history teaching twenty years ago, because so many historians had never been to Earth at all. That wasn’t so bad if they specialized in modern history, but even the leading experts in pre-history had never visited a single site. They didn’t want to be contaminated by us apes! Teaching pre-history when you’ve never been to Earth is like teaching literature when you’ve never scanned a book.
So they cracked down on the whole thing, made the History Foundation course purely about pre-history, and made it compulsory for it to be held on Earth. It makes sense. You can’t ignore pre-history. It’s the starting point for everything that has happened since the invention of the portal. So, all historians have to learn pre-history and experience Earth dig sites right at the start of their training.
When I finished dancing round the room, I sent a jubilant mail to Candace. She wouldn’t read it until next day of course. I had enough sense not to wake up my ProMum at midnight with an emergency-flagged mail unless it really was an emergency. Issette was a totally different matter. She was my best friend and I wanted to tell her this right away!
I dashed next door and stuck my hand on the door plate. I could hear the faint sound of its response from the other side of the door. A musical tone, followed by a voice saying, ‘Your friend Jarra is requesting admission.’
I gave it another minute or two and then tried again. The door opened and Issette stood there in a crumpled sleep suit, looking at me with bleary, accusing eyes. ‘This better be good! Are you dead or something?’ She turned round without waiting for an answer, went across to the bed and flopped on it with a dramatic groan.
I followed her in and the door shut behind us. ‘I got the mail about my course. I’ve been accepted!’
‘What? You woke me up at this hour to tell me that!’ Issette lifted her head to glare at me.
I grinned back at her. ‘I’ve been accepted by University Asgard.’
‘WHAT!’ Issette screeched.
A computerized voice interrupted us. ‘Please have consideration for others attempting to sleep at this hour and reduce your noise levels.’
Issette threw her pillow at its sensor box. We all hated having those things in our rooms. Officially they weren’t an invasion of privacy, because the units didn’t record or pass on information, they just told us off reproachfully. If you kept ignoring them for too long then they started making an annoying noise like a gong being sounded every second until they beat you into submission.
It wasn’t just noise they complained about either. They didn’t like fire hazards, messy rooms, or you getting too boy and girlish. It does nothing for a romantic moment when a computer voice interrupts saying: ‘Your current inter-person intimacy is exceeding that acceptable for your age group.’
There were always rumours going round that people had managed to hot-wire their room sensor to bypass monitoring, but most people just set the tampering alarm off and have to pay for a new unit out of their personal credits. Those things are expensive so I’ve never tried it myself. Cathan wasn’t worth it.
‘I can’t wait to leave Next Step and get away from that thing,’ snarled Issette. She turned back to me. ‘You’re not serious about University Asgard? You can’t be!’
I spent the next hour convincing her I was serious, and explaining what I was planning. The computer complained about our noise level several more times. Eventually Issette started taking me seriously.
‘I’d love to see their faces when they find out,’ she said. ‘You have to promise me to vid it and mail it to me.’
‘And you have to promise to keep this secret. Don’t tell anyone, none of our friends, no one. Only you and Candace know. If too many people find out about it, then someone will be bound to give it away. I can’t fool the other students if they’re expecting an ape to join their course.’
Issette pulled a face. ‘Don’t call yourself that!’
‘Please have consideration for others attempting to sleep at this hour and reduce your noise levels,’ said the voice.
We both groaned.
‘You aren’t even telling your psychologist then?’ Issette was shocked.
‘I’m dumping my psychologist. He’s optional after I leave Next Step.’ I didn’t think much of psychologists, and I felt my sessions with mine were a total waste of time.
‘I’d be lost without my psychologist,’ said Issette, but she didn’t argue any more. She was a believer in psychologists and I wasn’t. We’d been round this too many times in the past to bother with it again now.
She got back to the point. ‘I don’t see how you can manage to fool them even if you do manage to keep it secret. You won’t know all their stuff. The right clothes. The way they talk. I know we watch the vids but … And the sectors all have their own silly words. Those aren’t in the vids we see. We don’t see sector only stuff, there’s only the odd bit in a comedy when they do it for a joke.’
I nodded. ‘Yes, they can all speak Language, but they have dialects too. Alpha sector has the strongest dialect because those are the first planets settled during the Exodus century. Did you know, the newer the sector, the closer the dialect is to standard Language? I saw this info vid about linguistic history mapping and …’
Issette had her fingers in her ears. ‘No history lesson. Bad, bad, Jarra!’
‘Stop doing that.’
She took her fingers out of her ears. ‘Well, stop lecturing me on history. You’re always doing it.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Oh yes you are. You’re obsessed.’
‘I’m not obsessed.’
Issette just gave me her special look. It’s a sort of hard stare, which says she’s right, I’m wrong, and we both know it. It’s very hard to argue with, so I gave in.
‘Well, if you say so … Anyway, if I pretend to be from a sector, there are bound to be some other students from there, and I won’t have the accent or know the dialect. My plan is to say that my parents are Military.’
Issette looked suspicious. ‘Is that because you’re a fan of Arrack San Domex?’
It wasn’t, really it wasn’t. I’d picked Asgard because of Arrack San Domex, and he plays a Military character in Defenders, but my decision was based on logic this time.
‘No, it isn’t. All the sectors have their dialect, but the Military don’t. They stick to Language. When they’re on assignment, their kids live in places just like Home and Next Step, and Military kids usually go Military themselves. No chance of running into one in a class of thirty history students.’
‘That could work,’ Issette admitted. ‘That would explain your name too. Hospital Earth and the Military both use stupid old-fashioned names. I mean, “Issette”! Have you ever seen an Issette in the vids who’s less than eighty?’
I giggled. Issette has successfully resolved her anger and bitterness over being Handicapped, but her psychologist is still working on her hatred of her name. The only reason she hadn’t changed it years ago was that she couldn’t make up her mind about a new one.
Issette fell asleep soon after that, so I went back to my own room and started scanning info vids about the Military. You can’t totally trust the facts in these things, but it was fascinating all the same.
Well, the ones about Planet First opening up new worlds were fascinating. The ones about running the solar space arrays were interesting too, though I didn’t follow all the science in them. The policing stuff was a bit too like sociology in school. Yeah, yeah, we have cross-sector Military so the different sectors don’t have their own armies and get tempted to re-invent war. I shouldn’t be rude about it – I’m going history and I know we don’t want any more wars – but it gets a bit preachy.
As for the alien standby exercises, well that was just funny. Even the Military people taking part in them sometimes started to laugh in the middle. How do you train to fight aliens when you’ve never met any? The answer is you get someone to imagine mad scenarios, so you find yourself fighting computer-generated bouncing-ball-shaped aliens who can stick to ceilings or eight-legged things that squirt sticky ribbons at you that explode on contact.
All right, it’s serious stuff really. We haven’t met intelligent aliens yet, but it’s been mathematically proven that they must exist, and humanity will at some point meet them. Some of those aliens will be hostile. I may find it hard to believe, but it’s a scientific fact. We have to be prepared, and the Military are doing their best.
I scanned vids all night, and made notes of what I needed to study. I had one month to create myself an identity as a kid of Military parents. If I was going to make a success of this, I needed to make Military Jarra into a real person, and know what she would know. The more I found out, the more I realized I had to learn.
The bit about Military schools was a big shock. Since Military kids usually go Military themselves, their schools cover a lot of things to prepare them for that career. Military basic training is for new recruits from the sectors. Military kids skip it because they’ve already done it at school.
I nearly gave up when I found out all Military kids were trained in unarmed combat. It was only a month until Year Day, and University courses started the day after that. How could I learn unarmed combat in that short a time? Should I pick a different fake background? At least there were info vids I could study on this, and if I didn’t know all I should about the Military, it was pretty certain that my fellow students would know a lot less.
In the end, I decided to stick with the Military idea. I started making up career histories for my fake Military parents, details about bases where I would have lived, and mailed Candace asking if she could arrange anything about unarmed combat training.
Candace mailed me back about nine in the morning. The mail showed her holding a glass of frujit and smiling. ‘Congratulations, Jarra. I’ll find out about the training, but maybe you’re taking the Military research a bit too seriously. You do tend to get carried away by things. Why not have breakfast and get some sleep?’
I decided to take her advice.
3
The Year Day party was … a bit sad. The nine of us had lived together through Nursery, Home and Next Step, but now we were splitting up. I was heading off on my personal war against University Asgard. The others were all going to University Earth, but would be scattered across different courses and campuses.
Maeth and Ross were doing different courses, but would be on the same campus in Europe Central. Issette, Cathan and Keon would be together on a campus in Europe South. The other four of us would be heading off alone. I’d always known I would be, of course, since Pre-history Foundation classes spent the year working at some of the major dig sites.
Issette was going Foundation Medical. Cathan and Keon were both going Art, but they’d chosen different specialities. Cathan was going Art Paint and Keon was going Art Light. Probably just as well. They’d been asked to send in sample pieces of their work before starting their course, and Keon had been given some sort of award for his.
I’d seen a vid of his piece. A laser sculpture of lights weaving and shimmering through all the colours out of the tropical dome in Zoo Europe. Most of the time it looked totally abstract, but every now and then the colours would sort of fuse together and you saw it was a bird with outstretched wings. Keon called it ‘Phoenix Rising’. You’d have to see it to understand, but it was seriously zan. We were all grazzed to discover Keon actually had some talent. Most of us were grazzed in a good way, but Cathan was a simmering heap of resentment just waiting for an excuse to explode.
So, the nine of us were splitting up, and the Year Day party was a bit like a funeral. We were leaving Next Step. We’d meet up, but it would never be quite the same again. You wouldn’t understand, living out there with real parents, but the nine of us had been a family. We didn’t always like each other (Cathan usually wasn’t speaking to someone) but we were all we had to hang on to.
The younger ones were at the party too, sending us off the way we’d sent off the other years ahead of us. We opened all the partition walls in Commons, to make it one big room. We did all the traditional things, singing Old Lang Zine just before midnight. I tried telling the others just how old that song was, the way I did every year, and they all threw cups of Fizzup over me.
Then we put on the big vid wall to show the countdown to midnight, and shouted along in chorus as the numbers flashed on the screen. ‘Three! Two! One! Happy Year Day 2789!’
We cheered wildly as we all became a year older. Our Next Step Principal had been lurking in a corner keeping an eye on things, now she stepped forward. ‘Congratulations to our new adults. Let’s all wish them happiness in the future.’
The younger kids cheered again. I was embarrassed to find I was getting a bit weepy. Issette was unashamedly crying. We were 18, we were adult, we were moving on. There was a time when people counted ages from the day each person was born, not from Year Day. Must have made things really messy and lonely at times like this.
Eventually the younger ones headed off to bed, the Principal said goodnight, and it was just the nine of us left in Commons. Issette was asleep on the floor. We woke her up because Ross and Maeth wanted to register their first Twoing contract. They’d been waiting months for this. The rest of us watched while they dialled Registry, entered their details, and got the confirmation. Then we all applauded and gave a big cheer.
Ross was planning to work in either a Home or a Next Step one day, so he was going Care and Community Foundation Course. Maeth had picked a random course that was on the same campus. She wasn’t bothered what course she did, because she was planning to be a ProMum and you don’t need qualifications for that.
‘They only allow you to have a three-month contract to start with,’ Maeth said, ‘but that means we can get on to our second Twoing contract quickly, and qualify for joint student accommodation.’
Ross nodded. ‘One more three-month contract, then a six-month contract, and we’ll have the minimum three contracts and a year needed to get married. You have to all promise to come to our wedding next Year Day.’
We all promised.
‘After that …’ Ross grinned at Maeth.
She blushed. ‘After that, we have our kids. Ideally, I’d like our own kids to be at least two years old before I start being a ProMum when I’m 25.’
They had their whole future lives planned out. Listening to them, I didn’t know whether to be jealous or terrified. After a bit, they said goodnight and headed off. The rest of us went a bit quiet after that. I suppose we were all thinking the same thing. Just because a couple start Twoing, it doesn’t automatically mean that they … On the other hand, Maeth and Ross had been together a long time, so now they were adults they probably would … I told myself sternly that it was none of my own business.
Cathan’s mind was clearly also considering the options available to adults. He wandered over to sit next to me with horribly fake casualness.
‘We should get back together, Jarra,’ he said, in a low voice.
‘I’m about to spend a year on assorted history dig sites,’ I pointed out. ‘They’re only open to authorized visitors.’
‘You could visit me even if I can’t visit you.’
‘It’s not a good idea. You wouldn’t be happy unless we spent most of our time together, and that just wouldn’t be possible because of my work and the time zones.’
Cathan wasn’t accepting the polite brush off. ‘We’ve got a bit of time still before we head off. We can try and work things out. Let’s go to my room and talk. We’re 18 now, so I could go and buy some wine and …’
I got sick of being tactful. ‘I know we’re adults now and the room sensors won’t bother us, but I’m not getting drunk and spending the next thirty-six hours in bed with you.’ I stood up and tried to walk away.
‘Oh come on. You want to try it too …’ Cathan came after me, grabbed me, and gave me an incompetent attempt at a masterful kiss.
Just maybe my psychologist is right about my aggression, because I really enjoyed what happened next. I grabbed Cathan’s arms, rolled backwards, and threw him over my head. I’d been enjoying doing this sort of thing in unarmed combat lessons every morning for the past month, but doing it for real was totally zan!
I stood up, and looked down at Cathan. Commons had a nice padded floor, so he wasn’t hurt, just absolutely grazzed. So was everyone else. Issette pulled a buggy-eyed, amazed face at me.
‘Like I said, Cathan. The answer is no. Good night, everyone.’ I made a magnificent exit and headed to my room.
Once inside, with the door safely closed behind me, I fell on my bed and burst out laughing. Cathan’s face!
After a bit, I calmed down. I have to admit I put the vid on after that. I’d turned down Cathan’s generous offer, but I couldn’t resist indulging my curiosity by scanning a few adult vids. Since there was no one under 18 in the room, it gave me access to all the forbidden channels. I knew Beta was the most sexually permissive sector, so I took a look at some of their vids. Hoo eee! I’d never seen so much leg!
I went to bed after that and slept solidly through until early afternoon. When I woke up, I grabbed a quick meal down in Commons and started on the demoralizing task of packing. I’d lived in this room for six years, and it felt like I was dismantling part of myself.
I’d splashed out some credits on a set of luggage with hover pads. I wasn’t sure if everything would go in. It’s amazing how much stuff you can accumulate in one room. After an hour of sorting, I was quite positive everything wouldn’t go in.
A musical tone sounded and my door said, ‘Your friend Issette is requesting admission.’
I went over and hit the unlock plate. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. We do have voice command doors on Earth, we aren’t totally last millennium here, it’s just we don’t have them in our Next Step. They all got disabled after someone in the year above me hacked the system and started sneaking into girls’ rooms. A girl caught him vidding her in the shower, and when they checked his lookup he had vids of two other girls as well. All chaos broke out. It was the most exciting thing that ever happened here. Our Principal had six fuming ProParents in her office, and another forty officially registering concern. After that, the culprit got transferred to Correctional for his last three months in Next Step, and we all had to use unlock plates instead of voice commands.
Issette stood outside, arms full of old toys, her face registering total despair. ‘I’ll never find space for all this.’
‘I’m in trouble too, and I’ll be moving dig site several times during the year. I’ll have to keep unpacking and repacking it all.’ I tried to be practical. ‘I suppose we could throw some stuff out.’
‘I can’t throw them away,’ wailed Issette. ‘I can’t throw out Whoopiz the Zen and all the fluffies.’ Issette was very attached to her toys in Nursery, especially the strange skinny purple object that she called Whoopiz the Zen. She didn’t seem to have entirely grown out of it.
I didn’t want to toss all my old familiar clutter down a waste chute either, so we dragged everything over to a hired storage unit. It was surprisingly hard to close the door on the sad jumbled relics of our years in Nursery, Home and Next Step, and return to a stripped, impersonal room.
I didn’t sleep very well, but the next morning I could laze in bed until late. I was due at my course at ten in the morning, but this time I’d remembered to allow for the time zones. The first part of my course was in America North, so I had five spare hours.
My last bit of packing took only a few minutes. I spent a while helping out Issette, and then we both headed down to the entrance hall with our luggage. I just had to press my key fob, and my bags gathered up in a tight group behind me, bouncing up and down slightly in mid air, like obedient but excited puppies. Issette’s bags didn’t have hover pads, so she had them loaded on a hired hover trolley.
In the entrance hall we met five other hover trolleys, another two sets of hover pad luggage, and their owners. The nine of us stood in an awkward group, with nothing to say except the goodbyes we’d already said, but feeling unable to actually leave. This was the big moment that we’d dreamed of for years. No more Principal giving us orders. No more rules. No more room sensors nagging us. We could go anywhere we liked, and do anything we wanted. We were adults, we were free, and we were scared.
We’d probably have stood there all day, if the Principal hadn’t arrived. She did a quick head count, saw we were all ready to go, and put us out of our misery by waving us off.
We dutifully formed an orderly queue for the portal, and took out our lookups to check our destination codes. One by one we dialled, stepped into the portal, and vanished. I let the others go first, because they all had internal Europe destinations, and I was going inter-continent.
I portalled to the closest Europe Transit, wandered past the information signs about inter-continent portal charges, and portalled to America. AIPTH, that’s Automated Intercontinental Passenger Traffic Handling, randomly allocated me an American Transit destination, and I popped out in America Transit 2.
That’s where I made a really nardle-brained decision. I could have dialled straight to my destination from any local portal in America Transit 2, but I had the bright idea of going via America Off-world since that was where a genuine off-world student would arrive. I felt this would help me get in character as Jarra the Military kid.
It was a seriously bad move. I thought America Off-world would be nice and quiet by now. Around eight in the morning, it would be busy of course, the plaza full of Earth norm kids gathering up ready to portal through on the way to their off-world schools. The authorities generously pay for them to portal off world daily to school, but they aren’t completely insane about it. The big cost is establishing the portal, not keeping it open, so they march the kids through in batches of up to a hundred to keep the cost per head down to the minimum.
The mass off-world kiddie commute would be over by now, so I expected things to be peaceful, but I stepped out of the portal into chaos. It was the day after Year Day and every university course was starting. America Off-world was teeming with Handicapped parents sending their normal kids away to off-world universities. There were also off-world history and medical students flooding in. The problem wasn’t so much the people, but the quantities of luggage chasing their owners in all directions.
I weaved my way through the mob, avoiding the area with big red information signs about the colossal off-world portal charges, and went to another local portal. Anyone watching would think I was mad, coming here and then just going from one local portal to another. They’d be right too.
I was relieved when I made it without losing myself, let alone my luggage. I entered the code for the dome on New York Dig Site, where our course would be based for the first couple of months, and the portal started talking to me.
‘Warning, your destination is a restricted access area,’ it told me. ‘If your scanned genetic code is not listed as authorized for access, then your portal will not establish but your personal account will still be charged for this journey.’
I hesitated, with last-minute cowardly thoughts running through my head, and an acid voice spoke from behind me.
‘You may have all day, but I don’t!’
I glanced behind me at an impatient, elderly woman, who reminded me of my scary science teacher at school, turned back to face the portal and took a deep breath. I was Jarra, a Military kid, trained in unarmed combat. A history lecturer and twenty-nine other history students wouldn’t scare me.
I stepped into the portal and a new identity.
4
I arrived in a very basic accommodation dome. There had been no attempt to disguise the curve of the outside wall, or even colour the flexiplas from its depressing natural grey. I hadn’t expected anything better, because I’d been to several dig sites before with the school history club.
A harassed looking man of about thirty had been watching a trail of bobbing luggage head out of the door, presumably following its owner. He turned to face me and my own shoal of bags. ‘Welcome to University Asgard Pre-history Foundation course at the New York Dig Site. I’m Lecturer Playdon. You are …?’ He scrolled down a list of names on his lookup.
‘Jarra Reeath,’ I told him.
He first looked startled, and then as if he’d just noticed a very bad smell. ‘You’re in room 6,’ he said, stabbing his lookup with a vicious finger to check my name off on his list. ‘Student greet is in the dining hall in one hour.’
Someone else had just come through the portal. Lecturer Playdon turned to the new arrival, and I led my little procession of bags through the door and went in search of room 6. I’d learnt a few useful things in the one-minute encounter. Lecturer Playdon obviously knew what I was, and didn’t like it, but he was being professional and he wasn’t going to tell the other students. That was good news, but even better was the fact he hadn’t been able to tell at first glance that I was the ape girl. Rationally, I knew there was no truth in all the exo jokes about the look and smell of apes, but eighteen years of seeing them on the vid channels had still worn away at my confidence.
I tracked down room 6, which for some reason was between room 4 and room 12. It wasn’t bad for a room on a dig site. Bed. Storage space. Even a very small wall vid. I unpacked my bags, and then it was time to face the student greet. I’d survived meeting one enemy, and now I was going to meet another twenty-nine. I comforted myself with the fact that Playdon knew what I was, but the other students wouldn’t.
I’d already discovered the dining hall while looking for my room, so I headed back there. I found a dozen or so students sitting on grey flexiplas chairs around grey flexiplas tables and looking at the grey flexiplas walls. More were arriving.
I sat near the back, and tried to get in character. For a month, I’d studied Military vids. I’d trained in unarmed combat. I’d built an entire life history and family for Jarra Military kid, or JMK as I’d nicknamed her. By this time, I knew JMK better than I knew myself.
Lecturer Playdon was sitting at the front of the room and looking depressed. After a few minutes, he seemed to decide he had a full class present. He started with exactly the same words he’d said when I arrived.
‘Welcome to University Asgard Pre-history Foundation course at the New York Dig Site. I’m Lecturer Playdon.’
After that, he branched out into daring new verbal territory. ‘We will be staying at New York for the next two months before moving on to our next dig site. This is the dining hall, used for meals and classes. You’ll have noticed all the other rooms in this dome are very small. Has everyone found their rooms, and have you any problems or questions?’
A hand went up, from a blonde girl in a clinging dress of glowing fabric that showed patches of bare skin in unexpected places. None of them were actually over restricted body areas, but they were certainly very close to them. She could have stepped straight out of a wild party scene in a vid.
‘I couldn’t find the concealed door to the bathroom in my room, or the concealed window,’ she said. ‘Should I have a special key code?’
There were a few giggles from round the room. I was one of the guilty parties.
Lecturer Playdon broke the bad news to her. ‘That’s probably because there is no concealed door. There’s a bathroom at the end of each corridor. That’s one bathroom between ten of you, so no lingering in the shower. There are no windows in the dome. Anyone else?’
Everyone else kept quiet.
‘Good. I’ve one very important warning for you. Don’t go outside the dome until instructed to do so. I really mean that. Now I’ll let you get on with your meet and greet.’
He went to sit in a corner and ostentatiously started working through some info on his lookup. Apparently we were supposed to run things ourselves now. There was a nervous silence, and then a girl stood up. She looked just like a vid presenter, with glittering rainbow lights flickering randomly through her waist long, straight black hair. Expertly applied makeup emphasized the delicate features of her classically-beautiful dark face, and her clothes must have cost a fortune.
‘We’d better start introducing ourselves,’ she said, gazing round at us with a superlatively confident smile. ‘I’m Dalmora Rostha.’ The slow drawling way she spoke told me her home sector before she said it. ‘I’m from Alpha sector. My father is Ventrak Rostha. He’s made some info vids, and I’m hoping to make history vids myself some day.’
There was a sort of stunned silence. What got to me was the sweetly modest way she said it. ‘Made some info vids’ … Ventrak Rostha was famous. Just about everyone followed his History of Humanity series, each eagerly awaited episode covering another key event of the period since the first colony was set up on an Alpha sector world until the present day.
Ventrak Rostha was a brilliant man. I loved his vids so much that I could even forgive him for being an exo. That didn’t stop me hating his daughter though. She was probably a rich and spoilt nardle brain, who thought the rest of humanity should just lie down and be trampled on by her elegant little Alphan feet. It would happen too. She was guaranteed a glistening career ahead of her making vids. It didn’t matter how second-rate and incompetent they were, everyone would praise them to the skies because she was the daughter of the incomparable Ventrak Rostha.
Yes, I admit it, I was jealous.
Ventrak Rostha’s daughter smiled round at the grazzed class. ‘So who next? Anyone else from Alpha?’
There was dead silence.
‘Anyone from Beta sector then?’ asked our new celebrity leader.
The one in the party dress stood up and gave a theatrical wiggle. Oh yes, of course she was Betan. I’d worked that one out already from her dress.
‘I’m Lolia. I see we have sixteen men and fourteen women, so I know you won’t think I’m greedy when I say I’m looking out for a trio with two of you gorgeous boys.’
There were a few startled giggles. The sixteen gorgeous boys seemed a bit nervous as Lolia gave them each a predatory look of assessment. All except one, who was lounging back in his chair advertising the fact he didn’t care. He spotted me looking at him, and gave me what I could best describe as a leer.
I remembered I was Jarra the Military kid, gave him a long cold look in return, and then turned away. I hoped the general effect was that I’d considered him and was unimpressed. I made a mental bet that he was Betan too. I was right. He was the next one to stand up and introduce himself.
After that, we had a whole mob from Gamma sector, who talked with a slightly lilting quality to their sentences. The number of Gammans made sense since Asgard was in Gamma sector. I grudgingly had to admit they seemed a quiet and inoffensive bunch. The thought occurred to me that my random selection of University could have landed me on a Beta sector course. I shuddered, and mentally thanked Arrack San Domex for being from Asgard.
Miss Celebrity took us through the people from sectors Delta through Kappa after that. There were a few from Delta, a solitary girl from Epsilon, and no one from Kappa. That was hardly surprising. Epsilon sector is still busy building everything on its colony worlds, but Kappa is even newer so it’s still mostly in Planet First or Colony Ten phase.
Dalmora smiled at me. ‘I’m really sorry, but if you aren’t from Kappa then we seem to have missed you out somehow.’ She was a good actress, because she actually sounded like she cared.
I stood up. I noticed Playdon abandon his lookup to watch this, but I refused to let him intimidate me. ‘I’m Jarra,’ I said. ‘My family is Military.’
‘Interest!’ Celebrity Dalmora gazed at me in what appeared to be absolute delight and fascination. ‘A Military doing history! Are you going to go Military later?’
‘Unsure.’ I smiled. ‘I love history, but it’s difficult to combine it with a Military career.’
The boy from Beta chipped in. ‘I’ve never met anyone Military before. What does a Military girl do when a man kisses her?’
I gave him the cold stare. ‘That depends. If he asks politely first, and I say yes, then I kiss him back. If he doesn’t ask politely, or doesn’t take no for an answer, then I throw him across the room as a gentle hint to improve his manners.’
There were a few startled expressions round the room.
‘Do you do that often?’ asked the boy from Beta.
‘The last time was yesterday,’ I said, quite truthfully.
Everyone laughed.
I sat down again. I could see Lecturer Playdon looking at me with a raised eyebrow. I turned my head to give him a wide smile. He knew I was telling a pack of lies, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He wasn’t allowed to tell the others my confidential data.
Celebrity Dalmora started splitting us into little social groups next, like the perfect hostess that she was. She annexed me, two lads from Delta and the quiet girl from Epsilon for her own group. I had a feeling she picked us out as the ones who were most likely to need help socially.
She smiled round at us and decided to honour me with her attention first. ‘Jarra, it’s just totally zan being on a course with someone like you. Military! I chose to come on a Gamman university course because I wanted to meet people from other sectors, but this is even better than I’d hoped for.’
Part of me wondered what the great Dalmora would say if she knew she was wasting her charm on an ape girl, but most of me was busy being Jarra Military kid. I gave a politely modest shrug.
‘I hope you don’t mind me asking something personal,’ she said, with the confidence of someone who could always get away with asking anything she liked. ‘Both your parents are on active service? You went to residential schools rather than living with your family? That must be hard.’
Both the real me and the fake me could answer that one. ‘The residences are separate from the schools, but yes. We spend a lot of time living with other kids. They become almost like a family to us. I wouldn’t say it’s that hard …’
‘Interest!’ cried Dalmora.
Incredible the way she could sound as if she really cared. She turned the spotlight on one of the boys from Delta next. She remembered his name too, and the couple of sentences he’d said to the class. How did she do that? I’d only managed to remember a couple from the avalanche of names that had buried me in the last hour. Everything else was a blur.
‘Fian, you said you wanted to be a pre-history specialist. You’re sure about that already? I find all of history totally fascinate. I know I can’t study everything but it’s so hard to choose.’ Dalmora bestowed her professional smile upon Fian, just like an interviewer in a news vid.
Fian obviously had some strength of character, because he didn’t blush or act overwhelmed by Dalmora gazing at him. ‘Pre-history is where everything starts. People may feel modern history is more relevant, but it’s only a few hundred years out of millions. That’s a very thin skin on the surface of time. The minute you dig deeply into the reasons behind something in modern history, you find yourself back in pre-history. That’s where the blood and the bones are. The real problem is where to specialise within pre-history. You’ve got everything back to the dinosaurs to choose from.’
‘One day, I’d love to have you say exactly that in a vid, Fian,’ said Dalmora. ‘I hope I get the chance to do it. People casually dismiss so much in pre-history as no longer relevant. Getting people to really stop and think is the true achievement in an info vid.’
I wanted to scream. Dalmora was being so insufferably nice even if it was all an act. Fian actually sounded intelligent. I didn’t want these people to be nice or intelligent. I hated them for being norms when I was Handicapped, for being able to travel to other worlds when I was locked in a cage. I wanted them to be awful, horrible people, so I could think I was quite right to loathe exos.
I was in luck. Our group contained the celebrity, and the Betans weren’t going to be left out of it for long. The boy came over first, and gave me ample excuse to detest him. He looked Dalmora over first, blatantly examining her body, his attention lingering on the more private areas as if she was on offer for him to take. I hated Dalmora, but I found myself resenting that gloating assessment on her behalf. Even she, with her polished society manner, seemed rather disturbed by it.
With our hostess clearly disconcerted, there was an awkward silence in the group. The Betan ignored it. He finished enjoying his examination of Dalmora and moved on to the next item on the menu offered to him today. The next item was me. ‘Jarra …’ His eyes started crawling over me. I could almost feel them touching me.
I didn’t like it. JMK didn’t like it either. I tried not to react, since I had a theory he would get more enjoyment out of studying my body if I showed I objected to it. ‘I don’t remember your name,’ I said, trying to sound bored.
‘Lolmack,’ he said.
Now the gaze was off her, Dalmora had pulled herself together. ‘We have a Lolia and Lolmack from Beta. Very similar names.’
‘It’s the clan cluster prefix,’ said Lolmack. ‘Lolia is my half cousin by my father’s first triad marriage.’
‘Ah yes, Betan naming.’ Dalmora still wasn’t sounding her confident self.
Lolia oozed her way over to join us next. She exchanged a glance with Lolmack, and then gave the Deltan boys the same sort of lingering examination that Dalmora and I had just suffered. ‘Nice butts,’ she drooled.
There was a collective gasp from all the non Betans in earshot, including me. Hoo eee! Lolia had said the butt word! I know there were times in pre-history when it was fairly acceptable in polite conversation, and I’ve heard it used in the more daring Betan vids, but I’d never heard anyone say it in public before. Everyone says legs, and you can tell which bit they mean by the way they say it.
Lecturer Playdon seemed to appear from nowhere. I’d labelled him as one of those teachers who put in the bare minimum of work, but now I realized I was wrong. He’d been sitting on the sidelines, letting Dalmora run things, so he could study us. He spoke in the hard voice of authority.
‘I must remind the students from Beta sector that this is a University Asgard course, and monitored under the Gamma sector moral code. You agreed to abide by that code when you accepted a place on this course.’
Lolia looked at him wide eyed, with an expression of exaggerated surprise. ‘I only said “butt”.’
He gave her a thin smile. ‘I have just given you one formal reminder; I now give you an amber warning. That word is not acceptable under the Gamman moral code.’
‘I had no idea,’ said Lolia. ‘It’s really not that bad a word. If I’d said …’
‘You can recite me a list of obscene words if you like,’ said Playdon, ‘but each one will get you a warning. You can get yourself off this course in less than five minutes, with no refund of fees.’
He paused and looked round the class. ‘This seems a good time for me to point out that there are students here from five sectors and twenty different planets. You’ll be aware Beta is the most permissive sector, while Delta and Epsilon are the most conservative, but don’t depend too much on sector stereotypes. Planetary and individual standards vary within sectors, and the Gamman moral code requires you to treat other students with respect and consideration for their personal boundaries.’
Playdon walked away and sat down in his corner again. The Betans looked at each other and laughed.
‘Such a prude,’ whispered Lolia.
Despite Dalmora’s best efforts, conversation was a little sluggish after that. Everyone was relieved when Lecturer Playdon stood up again.
‘I think it’s time for lunch.’ His eyes turned to me. ‘Jarra, I’m sure you won’t mind me calling on you to help with your Military skills from time to time. Perhaps you can show the class how to use the food dispensers?’
‘Yes, sir.’ I stopped myself in mid salute. No, seriously, I wasn’t faking it. I’d watched so many info vids, and Jarra Military kid was so real in my head, that the ‘yes, sir’ and salute came automatically. The pupils at Military schools were cadets, and would salute their officer teachers.
The rest of the class seemed convinced, even impressed, as I marched over to the food dispensers and started demonstrating them. The Military me was in charge, but the real me was lurking somewhere on the mental sidelines and throwing a fit of the panics. I’d been in domes just like this on school history club trips, and I knew the food dispensers, but I’d clearly heard the message in Playdon’s words. I’d publicly claimed to be Military. He couldn’t call me a liar, but he was going to keep challenging me to prove my Military knowledge. I could get the food dispensers right, I could get a hundred things right, but just one mistake could ruin me. If I once showed that I wasn’t Military, everyone would start asking what I really was. I didn’t want them to find out the answer to that. Not yet. I wanted them to fully accept me, and to show them I was just as good as they were.
Having got my lunch, I left the choosier students complaining about reconstituted food, sat down at a table and started eating.
‘Excuse me,’ said a voice.
I looked up and recognised the Deltan boy, Fian. I remembered his name, when most of the others were a blur, because he seemed intelligent about history, and …
All right, I admit that was a lie. I could remember Fian’s name because he had long blond hair and nice legs, rather like Arrack San Domex.
‘I’m asking very politely if I can sit next to you,’ Fian said. ‘If you say no, then I’ll leave quietly. There’s absolutely no need for violence.’
I had to grin. ‘Of course.’
He put his tray on the table and sat down. ‘I’m hoping you’ll defend me from Lolia.’
He wasn’t the only one. Within thirty seconds, the remaining six seats at the table had been taken by other boys. There was silence for a while as everyone either ate, or prodded the food with a fork in the hope it would make it taste better.
‘What are those Betans doing here anyway?’ grumbled one of the boys from Gamma. ‘Since when did Beta sector have any interest in history?’
I moved on from my unappetizing main course to my cake. I’d told the class that cake survives the reconstitution process better than most things, so they’d all wisely gone for cake as well.
‘If we’re lucky they’ll leave soon,’ I said. ‘I doubt they have the faintest idea of what life on a pre-history dig site will be like. I’m just waiting to see if they scream when we go outside.’
One or two of the faces round the table looked worried. ‘Is it that bad?’ one of the Gamman boys asked. ‘I went on a dig last summer. We were excavating the remains of one of the first settlements on Asgard. It’s incredibly slow work of course, moving the soil away with tiny brushes, but we spent a lot of time sunbathing and we had picnics and …’
His words trailed off as he saw the look on my face. I didn’t believe it. I really didn’t believe it. By now, I was expecting complete ignorance from the Betans, but this was totally amaz! This lot had signed up for pre-history, and they had absolutely no idea what they were letting themselves in for. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed helplessly.
After lunch, Playdon got us to shift the tables out of the way, and set up the chairs in rows ready for our first class. We settled down in our seats and looked expectantly at him.
‘I realize you’ve come from a lot of different time zones,’ said Playdon, ‘so all I’m doing today is giving my standard introduction to the course. You’re here to learn about pre-history. This is a huge and largely neglected subject. Schools tend to focus on modern history, sometimes restricting their view even more narrowly to their own sector and planet history. Pre-history covers the whole of humanity’s history until when exactly?’
He looked expectantly at the class. I thought it was best if I kept quiet and didn’t attract attention.
Several voices muttered about Wallam-Crane inventing the portal.
‘Wrong,’ said Playdon.
Someone mentioned the first interstellar portal.
‘Wrong again,’ said Playdon.
‘The opening of the first Alpha sector planets to civilian settlement at the start of the Exodus century,’ said a voice from behind me. It sounded like Fian.
‘Correct,’ said Playdon. ‘Until that moment, humanity had effectively existed on only one world. That is the moment when pre-history ends and modern history begins. I normally give a brief introduction to the methods of the Planet First programme now, but since it’s a Military operation, I think we should hear about it from Jarra.’
Well, I could obviously forget the tactic of keeping quiet and not attracting attention. Playdon was going to give me every opportunity to make a fool of myself. He took a seat in the front row, and watched as I stood up and went to the front of the hall.
I’d scanned a lot of vids on Planet First in the last month. I summoned up those memories, took a deep breath, and let my Military alter ego take over.
‘Planet First Approach, Assessment, Screening, Control and Handover methods began with those used right at the end of pre-history on the Alpha planets. Of course, they’ve been improved hugely over the centuries, adding things like the Colony Ten phase. Every time something went wrong, the Military tried to build on the experience and make sure it could never happen again. One Thetis was more than enough.’
The whole class nodded at that, even the Betans. The ent vid channels were always showing horror vids, set in the Thetis chaos year, with celebrity casts struggling to survive and dying heroic deaths in ghastly detail.
‘The first approach to a new star system is with an unmanned probe sent through a five second, drop portal,’ I continued. ‘It sits there passively assessing planets and looking for signs of intelligent alien life. Eventually, it tries sending out a whole series of mathematical and other greets. If there’s still no sign of intelligence, then it moves in towards the most habitable planet, stops, passively monitors again for a spell, and then starts active sensor scans.’
This was just like lecturing to my class at school. I was starting to enjoy myself. They didn’t let me lecture my class at school very often. I always had lots of interesting things to say, but my school friends were reluctant to listen.
Having got over my initial nerves, I risked trying some humour. ‘If, at any point, a sign of intelligent alien life is found then the probe sends alarm calls, Alien Contact programme activates, and thousands of specialist people will get an emergency mail calling them up for instant duty. You may know that hasn’t happened yet.’
There was encouraging laughter from the class.
‘We have however had two near misses, and those worlds are under quarantine to allow those neo-intelligent races to continue their normal evolution. If the issue of intelligent aliens doesn’t arise, and the sensor scans show the planet is suitable for human life, the planet moves into Planet First stage 2. We have a lot of conditions on climate and other things, and we want a sizeable continent that satisfies them. There are plenty of planets around and we can afford to be choosy. There are checks for any number of hazards, stellar radiation, solar storm strength. You name it, we check it.
‘If the planet still looks good, then it moves into the process people really think of as Planet First. Stage 3 is where the Military go planetside on our chosen continent, and this is where it gets dangerous. Almost every planet capable of sustaining life has already evolved its own eco system. The Military have to find and analyse every form of animal, plant, insect, fish, bacteria or other life. They have to discover and assess every possible threat, or we end up with another Thetis. If any of those life forms cannot either be controlled or eliminated then the planet is abandoned.’
Playdon had an odd expression on his face now. I couldn’t work out what it meant, so I tried to ignore it. ‘Stage 4 of Planet First is cleansing the continent of anything harmful. Creatures are either culled, or relocated on other land masses to keep the ecologists happy. Finally, we think things are safe. The planet then moves from Planet First into Colony Ten, and is handed over to the first stage colonists. They can’t leave for ten years, unless they find something dangerous that the earlier stages missed. That’s only happened half a dozen times, but when it did things got nasty. At the end of the ten years, the colonists get paid a fortune, plus bonuses for every child born, and the planet is opened for habitation as part of the newest sector, currently Kappa.’
I looked round at my audience. They still seemed awake, so I added a bit from a Military public information vid I’d seen. ‘It’s worth remembering that every new planet opened up for humanity costs not only a lot of credits, but is also paid for in human blood. Not a single one of the planets has been opened up without at least one member of the Military dying to make it safe for you.’
I went to sit down, and was startled by a round of applause.
Playdon stood up again. ‘Well, thank you for that very eloquent explanation, Jarra. I expect you’re all sitting there wondering what that had to do with pre-history. The answer is this. Only one inhabited planet has never been through Planet First screening, and that’s Earth. If it had been assessed by Planet First, it would have failed. It suffers from too many solar storms, its moon is too large, it’s too close to an asteroid belt. It has five inhabited continents and none of them satisfy the climate conditions for Stage 2. Even if you overlook that, all of them contain plant and animal life that would never be allowed through Stage 3. This planet is dangerous. It was dangerous in pre-history, and it’s a lot more dangerous now.’
‘But the apes live here without any problems,’ a dark haired Gamman boy objected. I was somehow glad Fian hadn’t said that.
‘The settlements are safe, Krath, protected by shields from wild animals, but those are a very small part of the planet,’ said Playdon. I noticed he’d objected to Lolia using the butt word, but didn’t comment on the word ‘ape’. ‘You won’t get eaten by anything hostile wandering round a terminal or a shop, but most dig sites are outside the shields in long abandoned areas.’
He gave a grim smile. ‘You’re here to experience pre-history in a way that you can’t by just scanning vids, so you’re going to the old ruined cities. They are extremely hazardous. There are animals, plants and insects that can and will kill you given the chance. The ruins you’re studying can also be lethal. Humanity had this planet pretty well tamed before Exodus century, but it still had its dangerous areas. Now it’s not tame at all. If you didn’t realize it before, realize it now.’
He looked round the class. ‘I draw your attention one final time to the conditions you agreed to when joining this course. I hope you bothered to scan them. University Asgard will make every effort to ensure your safety, but has absolutely no liability for any death or injury that occurs. This is a legal warning and is on record. If you don’t accept the conditions, then portal out now.’
Several of the class looked hopefully at the Betans, but sadly they showed no sign of leaving. I expect they thought Playdon was exaggerating. Maybe they would think again when they found out he wasn’t.
‘That’s all for today,’ said Playdon. ‘I suggest you rest and try and get yourselves acclimatized to this time zone. Tomorrow we start work at nine.’
5
I tried to call Issette later on and just got the ‘not available’ message. Then I tried to send her a mail, but gave up in the end. I couldn’t work out what to say about the exos on my course. The Betans were ghastly, Krath was an idiot, and the Alphan girl was too sickeningly perfect, but the others seemed normal. I don’t mean normal rather than Handicapped, I mean they were ordinary people.
I was feeling pretty weird to be honest. In amongst the hate thing I felt for the norms, there was some guilt about the lies, and the whole Jarra Military kid fantasy was getting disturbingly real. I went to bed in a bad mood, and had a dream where I really was JMK. I was living her life on a Military base, my Military parents were back on leave and …
I woke up early, feeling confused and disoriented after that crazy dream, and found a mail waiting for me from Issette. A long one, where she chattered away with the flushed, happy, excited look that I knew so well, telling me all about how she’d been at her evening student meet and greet when I tried to call her, and how wonderful it had been. I wanted to call her back and talk properly, but she’d be in classes. The five hour time difference between our continents didn’t sound much but it was a real communication problem.
Instead, I spent half an hour recording and rerecording a one minute reply. It was difficult, because there was so much I couldn’t talk about without seeing Issette face to face, or that I couldn’t tell her at all. If I mentioned the dream, she’d start sending me mails full of nardle stuff about talking to a psychologist.
In the end, I just replied with a mail where I said I’d arrived fine, and we’d had a meet and greet too. Then I went off to the dining hall for breakfast. I was peacefully eating, and wishing the food dispensers could supply frujit, when Playdon’s voice interrupted me.
‘Jarra, given your Military skills, I’d like you to help out this morning. Can you be prepared to demonstrate how to put on an impact suit? You can collect one from the store room.’ He looked down at me with a thin smile of pure evil.
‘Yes, sir.’ I smiled back. Yesterday, he’d tried catching me out on my knowledge of Planet First, and now he was going to try me with an impact suit. He clearly didn’t realize how much experience I had of dig sites. He probably thought my application comments about them meant I’d spent time somewhere like Stonehenge or Pompeii, which were nicely sanitized bits of ancient history located safely within protected areas. He was going to get quite a surprise. I’d been wearing impact suits on school history club trips since I was 11.
I finished my breakfast and headed off to the store room. This assignment from Playdon was really zan, because it meant I got first choice of impact suit. Getting the right size of impact suit is the vital thing, but getting one in good condition as well makes life so much more pleasant. You don’t want the oldest and smelliest suit in the bunch. I was lucky; there was one in my size that looked almost new.
I popped back to my room, swapped my underwear for my skintight, and put my ordinary clothes back over the top. My skintight was perfectly respectable, covering all the restricted body areas, but I was feeling defensive with those Betans around. I collected my precious, almost new impact suit, and went back to the dining hall. The class were sitting waiting, and looked at me curiously as I walked up to the front carrying the suit.
Playdon nodded towards me. ‘Jarra has kindly agreed to demonstrate an impact suit to you. You’ll be wearing these every moment you’re outside this dome, so pay close attention. Jarra, over to you.’
I’d given this demonstration about ten times before, to new people on history club trips, so I had it pretty well rehearsed.
‘Like the dome we’re in, and the food dispensers, the impact suits are standard Military issue. They’re the cheaper training versions of those used on Planet First missions. They’re designed to do their job, not to be pretty or luxurious. You collect one from the store room and keep it while we’re at this dome. They’re all an identical black, and it’s essential to make sure you get the right size. Professionals have their own personal suits, which have a few extra features and can be painted different colours. I expect Lecturer Playdon has his own.’
Playdon nodded. ‘Mine is blue, so it’ll be easy to recognise me when we’re suited up.’
I held up my standard black suit. ‘You wear these on the dig site, and they’ll keep you alive in most situations. Your first problem is getting one on. It’s not easy. Military standard is to be able to suit up inside two minutes in case of a dome breach. If any of you can get a suit on in less than five minutes then you can feel pleased with yourself.’
I was proud of the fact I could put on an impact suit in Military standard time. The history club had a competition once and spent an entire day practising. Only three of us broke the two minute barrier.
‘I recommend wearing a skintight underneath your impact suit. If you haven’t got one yet then go for a swimming costume, leotard, or some thick, sensible and close-fitting underwear.’
Lolia interrupted me. ‘I never bother with underwear.’
I smiled at her. ‘If you prefer being in severe pain then that’s your choice. Impact suit material can pinch delicate body areas when it activates, so you want some protection.’
I switched my attention back to the class in general. ‘Remember when putting on an impact suit that you do everything slowly and smoothly. No sudden jerks, or you activate the material and it goes solid, exactly the way it’s designed to do. It protects you from falling rocks, being stabbed, or bitten. Predators will break their teeth on it.
‘There are a lot of controls here on the left arm,’ I pointed them out. ‘I suggest you don’t touch them. You may feel too hot or too cold to start with, but wait a few minutes for your suit to adjust to outside temperatures. If you can’t make it to the bathroom then your suit will handle it, but try not to test that. The suit can cope, but it’s not good for your underwear.’
The class laughed.
‘One control you do touch is the one that sets your identification. You can’t see faces through an impact suit, they’re designed to let you see out, but people looking in can only see an unidentifiable blur. So we know who you are, set it to your name like this.’
I set my suit so the front and back had my name in large glowing letters. ‘Don’t mess around using rude words or other peoples’ names. It’s not original and it’s not funny. In an emergency, not knowing who is where can mean someone dies. You’ll also need to know about the communication controls, but I expect Lecturer Playdon will take us through how he wants us to use those.’
I started stripping off my clothes and Lolmack whistled. He looked unimpressed when my skintight appeared. ‘You could wear something a lot sexier than that.’
‘If the audience was better, then I might,’ I said. ‘This is a skintight, specially made to wear under an impact suit. As you can see, it’s similar to a swimming costume, but rather tougher material. They’re wonderful things. Take them in the shower with you after you get out of your impact suit, and they’ll wash, dry as fast as you during the hot air cycle, and be ready to wear again. You can get them in several different styles and colours, but I’d recommend the standard male or female style in black.’
I looked at Dalmora who was sitting in the front row. ‘Shoulder length hair can just be tucked back into your hood, but very long hair is best in a single plait down your back.’
She nodded.
My eyes drifted from her hair to the ornate gold creation that she wore around her neck. ‘Your necklace is very lovely.’
Dalmora glanced down at it. ‘It’s been in my family for over five hundred years. One of my ancestors brought it to Alpha sector with her when she left Jaipur during Exodus century. By tradition it’s handed down to the eldest daughter on her eighteenth birthday.’
I’d assumed the necklace was a reproduction made from manufactured gold, but Dalmora Rostha was wearing a genuine historic artefact around her Alphan neck. Typical. Oh well, I’d feel rather petty if I left it to Playdon to warn her about the risks of jewellery. Three years ago, I’d been nardle enough to forget to take off a ring before putting on my impact suit, and lost my left little finger when the suit triggered. I’d had the finger regrown in hospital of course, but the thought of wearing a ring had given me a creepy feeling ever since.
‘It can be hazardous to wear jewellery under an impact suit,’ I said. ‘If the suit material triggers then it can force the metal to cut into you. Talk to Lecturer Playdon if this is an issue. Now, watch closely as I put my suit on. You always start with the feet.’
I demonstrated how to roll the suit gently and smoothly up your legs, and then arms. Pulling up the hood and sealing the front was the easy bit. Just for fun, I checked my time for putting on the suit. One minute, fifty-five seconds! I noticed Playdon giving me another of his odd looks.
‘One last thing,’ I said. ‘When you seal the front of your suit, it runs an automatic self test sequence. If an alarm goes off, then your suit is faulty. Let Lecturer Playdon know, don’t just put it back in the store room.’
Playdon stood up. ‘Thank you, Jarra. Now everyone, I’ll issue you suits from the store room, and you can start practicing suiting up ready for our first trip outside.’
Lolia raised a hand. ‘I’ll need you to give me some advice on my underwear.’ She gazed suggestively at Lecturer Playdon.
‘I’m sure you can manage by yourself,’ he said.
‘I’m entitled to proper teaching, aren’t I?’ she said, reproachfully.
‘I can give you a hand picking something suitable if you like,’ I offered.
‘Perhaps Jarra could help me out with my underwear too,’ said Lolmack.
Lecturer Playdon and I exchanged glances, and changed at least temporarily from adversaries to allies. ‘Jarra will advise Lolia,’ said Playdon, ‘and I’ll help you, Lolmack.’
Lolia sighed. ‘You people are no fun.’
It wasn’t just Lolia and Lolmack who needed advice. Just about everyone did. Deciding what to wear under the impact suit was easy; actually putting it on was quite another matter. It’s hard to stretch a suit over your skin without the material locking up, so I could hardly blame this bunch of exos for needing some help. Playdon and I ended up doing patrols along the corridors, and responding to cries for help from rooms.
Helping novices with an impact suit is always a strange mix of frustration and comedy. If you don’t get the bottom half of an impact suit on properly, then it’s impossible to get it over your shoulders. I did my best not to laugh, but sometimes the look of despair on their faces when they realized they had to take it off and start all over again …
‘But I’m so close,’ said Fian, looking at me with a tragic expression. ‘It’s taken me twenty minutes to get this far. If I could just get my left arm in …’
‘It’s the only way,’ I said, trying desperately not to giggle.
‘I’ll never manage this …’ He sighed and started peeling the suit off again.
‘After a few times, you’ll get the hang of it.’ I realized I was enjoying the view of a semi-clad Arrack San Domex lookalike rather too much, and headed off to respond to a scream from Dalmora.
It took a mere two hours to wedge everyone into a suit. Even then, Lolia seemed to have a slight limp. Maybe she hadn’t stretched the suit over her legs properly, or maybe she’d managed to lock the suit material and pinch somewhere painful. I thought it was better not to ask.
‘Everyone finally ready?’ Playdon’s voice had the faint echo that you always get when you hear someone through the suit communication unit as well as in real life. ‘I’m talking to you on the team circuit. Answer when I call your name.’
He took us through the roll call slowly. ‘Good, everyone has their comms working on the team circuit. Always remember the importance of talking on the right channel when you’re in an impact suit. If you’re just talking to someone standing next to you, don’t use the comms at all. If you want your whole team to hear, talk on the team circuit. If you want to talk privately to me, there’s a private circuit that links you to your team leader. If it’s appropriate for every team on New York Main Dig Site to hear you, talk on the broadcast channel. Talking on the wrong channel can obviously be extremely embarrassing. If you’re asking a girl standing next to you for a date, then you don’t want hundreds of people on dozens of teams to hear it.’
There was an outbreak of nervous giggles.
‘For now, use the team circuit if you’re in trouble or out of ear shot, and don’t play around with the other channels or you’ll annoy all the other dig teams in the area. We move outside now.’
I was deeply thankful when we finally lined up and opened the dome door. This lot were worse than any history club group I’d been with. In fairness, they were all totally new to this, while our history club trips always included far more experienced people than novices, but it was still driving me crazy.
The door opened and we saw a grim world waiting for us. It was winter in New York. There were a scattering of trees on the hillside ahead of us, but they were barren of leaves, and the branches were each carefully etched with a layer of ice. I gazed at the winter landscape thoughtfully. I’d only been here in summer and this looked much more intimidating. The cold hit me as I followed Playdon out of the dome and my impact suit felt like ice on my skin. The next two minutes were going to be painful as my suit adjusted itself.
There were squeals of protest from the others as they followed us. ‘I’m freezing! How do we turn up the warmth on these suits?’ asked Krath.
‘I strongly suggest you don’t,’ Playdon said, but a few of them tinkered with the temperature controls anyway.
Two minutes later, everyone who had listened to him was nice and comfortable. The ones who had messed with their controls were screaming they were too hot and turning the temperature down. Two minutes after that, they were freezing. I made a mental note of the idiots in the group. The Betans were on the list of course.
The Deltan boy, Fian, who I had rated as at least semi-intelligent, was sticking close to me. With faces entirely invisible through suits, it was hard to be sure, but my impression was that he was watching me and copying my every move. I felt this proved he was intelligent. At least I knew what I was doing just a little bit better than the ones who were currently screaming about being cooked alive for the second time.
Eventually, we had the temperatures sorted out, and Playdon called us all to gather round him. ‘We’re just going to head up to the top of the hill and get a view of the dig site. Everyone stay together and be careful. If you manage to get yourself lost, ask for help on the team circuit and stay where you are until we find you. Whatever happens, don’t take off your impact suit. Bears should be hibernating, but the wolf packs will be hungry this time of year.’
‘What’s a wolf?’ asked Lolia.
‘Wild ancestors of dogs,’ said Playdon. ‘They hunt in packs. The moose and deer herds shelter in the ruins in winter and the wolf packs follow them. I’ve got a gun, but I’d rather not have to use it. They tend to attack lone targets. If we all stick together, they probably won’t bother us.’
‘Are they dangerous?’ asked a female voice.
I checked the glowing suit name, and saw it was the girl called Amalie from Epsilon sector. If they all wore glowing name labels when they weren’t in suits, I’d find it a lot easier to work out who they all were. Playdon seemed to have us all tagged correctly, while Miss Personality from Alpha had names and life histories down pat, but the rest of us were struggling.
‘Without a suit, they would tear you into pieces and eat you,’ said Playdon. ‘In an impact suit, I doubt they could do you a lot of harm, but you probably wouldn’t enjoy them trying. Let’s get moving.’
We headed up the slope ahead of us at a very slow walk. I paused to wait for the rest of them to catch up. A suit labelled ‘Fian’ came up to me.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but how do you move that fast? My suit keeps jerking me to a stop.’
I noticed he’d been bright enough to set his comms to the right channel while he asked the question, so it wasn’t transmitted for the whole class to hear. I checked that I had mine set properly as well before I replied.
‘The trick is moving as smoothly as possible,’ I explained. ‘Sudden movements can trigger the impact suit material and it locks up.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Do we have to wear these clumsy things?’ moaned Lolia loudly from the back of the group.
‘Maybe we should let her take it off. The wolves could use a good meal …’ I muttered to myself.
Fian overheard me and laughed.
Playdon obviously enjoyed the dramatic, because he gathered us up into a group again just before we reached the top of the hill, so everyone got to see New York at once. I’d seen it before, but never in winter. In summer, it’s a vast black expanse as far as the eye can see, with the odd patches of green trying to make an impression on the mess. At this time of year, the white of frost and a dusting of powdery snow added an extra bleakness to the mounds of rubble and the blackened skeletal remains of skyscrapers still soaring up into the sky.
‘Dear God!’ said Lolmack.
‘Respect!’ chorused a few others automatically. Ever since the physicists found evidence that the universe was created by an unknown entity or entities, there’s been a general feeling that it’s wise to avoid swear words involving deities.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It was a bit of a shock.’
‘I’d no idea,’ murmured Fian. ‘I’ve seen some ancient vids, but the sheer scale of this …’
‘Welcome to New York, once home to twelve million people,’ said Playdon. He let us absorb the scene for a few minutes longer. ‘Anyone know when in pre-history the last skyscraper was finished?’
I laughed.
‘I see Jarra knows that’s a trick question,’ said Playdon. ‘The last skyscraper was built twenty-five years after the exodus started. By the time it was finished, the population of Earth was already plummeting. No one ever lived or worked in it.’
‘Why did they let it all get into this mess?’ asked Lolia.
‘After Exodus century, there weren’t enough people left to maintain the cities,’ said Playdon. ‘For every building in use, there were a hundred empty ones. It was a lot easier for the remaining people to gather together in selected small towns and villages, than to try and maintain a few buildings in the middle of a ruined city.’
Fian knelt cautiously down and scraped his hand along the ground. The struggling grass became smeared with black. ‘There were fires here?’
‘There were many fires after it was abandoned,’ said Playdon. ‘There were inflammable materials left in a lot of the buildings, chemicals, even explosives. One massive fire continued burning for nearly two months. Always keep in mind that the ruins themselves are dangerous. It’s not just wild beasts, there are vicious pieces of glass and metal, decaying chemicals, and buildings that can collapse if you just breathe on them. Never trust the ground underfoot because it’s treacherous. They built downwards as well as up, and you can fall through into underground sewers, cellars, the transport network, even underground waterways. If you ever need to find your own way through the dig site, then look for the marked clearways, or failing that the deer trails. The herds have worked out their own safe routes.’
‘But why?’ asked Lolmack. ‘Why bother going in there?’
‘We’re looking for lost history, culture, and technology,’ said Playdon. ‘During Exodus, the new planets were focused on their own immediate problems. They thought humanity’s store of knowledge was safe on the home world. They thought Earth would provide all the technology, spare parts, and medicine whenever they needed them in the future, but so many people left so fast that the whole infrastructure of Earth fell apart. They learnt their mistake one night in 2409 when the Earth data net crashed. The few staff left did their best to patch it and get it running again, but there was a second catastrophic failure. Some fool tried to do the regular data backups and he couldn’t have done anything worse.’
Playdon paused. ‘The Alpha worlds sent back their best experts, and they salvaged what they could from the corrupted backups, but we’d lost half of humanity’s data. After that, they took action. They tracked down all the major art and museum collections they could, and shipped them out to the Alpha worlds.’
‘Alpha sector is honoured to be the guardians of human culture,’ said Dalmora.
Playdon ignored that remark. The other sectors are a bit jealous of all the ancient relics being kept by Alpha.
‘Independent data archives were set up at every university, and we constantly run cross checks between them looking for flaws. The idea is we’ll never lose data again, but there are huge gaps in what we have. Some of it may still be out there.’ He nodded at the ruins.
‘It’s hard to believe anything can have survived in that,’ said Fian.
‘You get the odd freak survival by pure chance,’ said Playdon. ‘Last year they found an entire dry cellar packed with stuff. There were even two real books. More common are the stasis boxes. People were leaving Earth and you couldn’t casually portal between worlds then. They were going and never expected to come back. It was the fashion to leave a stasis box behind them, as a sort of memorial. They left them in their abandoned houses, preserving oddments, souvenirs, and records of who had once lived there. They’re still out there, we’re still finding them, and you never know what treasure trove may be inside the next one we open. In 2310, humanity’s science and technology was at its peak. We’ve now surpassed them in the areas of medicine and portal technology, but we’re still painfully regaining the rest.’
‘They were the magicians,’ I said. ‘Think of the glorious cities they built. New York, New Tokyo, London, Moscow, Paris Coeur, Berlin, Eden … Now it’s all in ruins, and we’re scavenging for scraps of their knowledge.’
‘Exactly.’ Playdon’s voice sounded startled, and I saw his head turn to look in my direction. ‘Most of this class will suffer their compulsory year on Earth’s dig sites, then leave and never come back, but a few of you may be caught by the joy of discovering the past, or even by its financial rewards, and make this your career.’
His emotion was obvious in his voice, and now it was my turn to be startled. Playdon felt the same way that I did about these sprawling ruins of the past, and the people who had lived there, and the discoveries waiting for us. I’d never managed to make Issette or Candace understand, even most of the school history club didn’t share my feeling that the past was still alive, but Playdon did. It was strange to recognize my own passion for pre-history in an exo.
We all stood there for a while after that, silently thinking. Finally, Playdon spoke again in a brisk voice. ‘Tomorrow, we’re working in Sector 22, and we’ll be heading out on to the site along the clearway that you can see over there.’ He pointed out the path, with its glowing markers, leading off into the ruins.
Playdon had been carrying his lookup with him. Now he worked on it for a moment, and a miniature model of the New York Dig Site appeared in mid air ahead of us. He increased the projection to a huge size that would be quite a drain on the lookup’s power, and zoomed in. We could see the clearway now, with ruined buildings either side.
‘This is the way we’ll be going tomorrow. I’m getting this image from the data mosaic for New York Main. This is how the area looked at the last aerial survey about ten months ago. I can look at it in several ways. Plain image like this one, or hazard rated by grid square.’
The image changed. Now it was coloured in patches of red, amber and green squares.
‘As always,’ said Playdon, ‘green is good, red is bad, and black is access forbidden, but bear in mind that the hazard ratings are only a best guess from the computer. I can add in the information on which grid squares have already been worked and they go blue.’
Some squares changed to blue. Not surprisingly, the blue squares tended to cluster near the clearway.
‘Notice some areas are flashing blue.’ Playdon pointed at one. ‘Those mean they’ve been partially worked, but still contain something interesting. I can call up further information on those. Usually, people stopped work because they came across an unexpected hazard, but tomorrow we’re going to a grid square where they just ran out of time. The team dug out a stasis box from there, and believed there was a second one but didn’t have time to reach it. Normally they’d come back for it the next day, but this was just before Year End and their last day at New York Main. Tomorrow, we’ll be picking up where they left off, and we hope they were right about that second stasis box.’
Zan, I thought joyfully. Tomorrow we would be digging, and with every chance of finding a stasis box!
Playdon turned off his lookup, and led us all back to the base. ‘You’ve got an idea now of the conditions you’ll be facing. This afternoon, I want you all to practise suiting up. I’m sending details of styles and prices of skintights to your lookups. If anyone wants one, let me know this evening. We can get a discount on a group order, and they usually deliver within a day.’
‘That’s all for now,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow we start the real work.’
We headed into the dome and there was a race to get out of our suits and be first into the bathroom. I won!
6
The next day we headed out for our first dig. It was another slow start, with people still struggling with impact suits. We finally got outside and Playdon opened up the big doors of the huge sled storage dome that sat next to the accommodation dome like a big brother. He turned on the glows, which slowly beat back the shadows and illuminated the huge space. There must have been nearly twenty hover sleds, in varying sizes, and I couldn’t even see some of the ones at the back.
‘We have several types of small specialist sleds, as well as the big transport sleds.’ Playdon looked round at us. ‘Who’s had experience driving a hover sled?’
I put my hand up. In an Earth class, just about every hand would have gone up. Here only about half the hands did. I suppose exos don’t have as many hover sleds around as we do on Earth. We get more solar storms, so have more portal outages to worry about, and every settlement has its emergency hover sleds.
‘Good.’ Playdon made notes against names on his lookup. ‘If you can’t, then it’s really simple to learn, but for our first trip we’ll stick to giving people jobs they know as far as possible. Now, who can drive a big transport sled?’
I put my hand up again. There were a lot fewer hands going up this time, but even on Earth not many people can drive the big sleds. It would be quite an achievement to get into trouble driving an ordinary hover sled, given the small size, simple controls, and anti collision protection. Large transport sleds are different though, because of their weight and momentum. You have to pass a test to drive one on Earth, so few bother. We have an age restriction too, so I couldn’t do my test until I was 16. I hate age restrictions.
‘Krath, when have you driven a transport sled?’ asked Playdon.
‘I’ve driven my father’s transport sleds. He runs a refuse collection and recycling business.’
There were a few giggles from the class.
‘Dalmora?’
‘I’ve gone along with my father when he’s been making vids,’ the daughter of the great Ventrak Rostha told us lesser mortals. ‘Some of them need a lot of equipment, props, costumes, so we use the transport sleds.’
‘Amalie?’
‘Construction work,’ said the quiet girl, Amalie. ‘I’m from Epsilon, so I’ve driven them for years.’
Playdon nodded. Everyone knew that planets in Epsilon sector were in the frantic building phase. The standard joke was that if you wanted to go shopping on an Epsilon planet, then first you had to help build the shop.
‘Jarra?’
Was it my imagination, or was Playdon’s voice suddenly frosty? I didn’t like it, but I kept my reply to him calm and Military. ‘Training trips, sir. Transporting people and equipment.’
A couple of the Gamman boys had experience driving big transport sleds too. Playdon made more notes on his lookup. ‘We’ll be taking out four specialist sleds, and two big transports today. I like to have enough sleds that we can cope if one breaks down. It happens very rarely, and there are emergency evac portals, but walking to one in an impact suit can be hard work.’
He looked round and picked the two Gamman boys to drive the transports, then pointed out four of the specialist sleds and allocated drivers to them. We were taking a sensor sled, a tag support sled, and two heavy lifts. Playdon was only planning to run one dig team then. I didn’t blame him for that, since it would be hard enough running one team with this bunch of clueless exos. I could blame him for still not picking me as a driver though. Didn’t he trust an ape to drive any of his precious sleds, even the little ones?
The drivers carefully manoeuvred the selected sleds out of the storage dome, and the rest of us piled on board the transport sleds. They were the basic ones, with no luxury frills like roofs to keep off the rain, or comfy chairs. At the front, were the controls and driver’s seat, behind that was just a huge bare hover platform with rows of bench seats and some clear space for equipment.
Playdon rode on the lead transport sled, the second transport followed, and then four small specialist sleds. We headed off to the edge of the rubble and started moving along the clearway.
Playdon’s voice came over the team circuit. Those of us on the same sled could hear him talking without the comms, but he needed to use the team circuit so those on the other sleds could hear.
‘We’re now entering New York Main Dig Site,’ Playdon said. ‘I’ve notified New York Main Dig Site Command of our entry. Dig Site Command monitor all teams on the site. I’m using a comms channel you can’t hear when I talk to them. At the moment, the only channels you should be hearing are the team circuit, your private channel if I want to talk to you without the rest of the team hearing, and the broadcast channel that Dig Site Command uses when they want to broadcast information to all teams.’
It was thrilling to be entering New York Main. I’d worked on New York Fringe Dig Site on summer trips with the school history club. My first trip into Fringe was when I was 11, the next two years we went to other dig sites, but I was back at the Fringe at 13, and again at 17. The Fringe is a nice flat area, with none of the old skyscrapers left standing, so it’s relatively safe. That’s where the Earth school parties, and the people who work the sites as a weekend hobby, do their digging.
You don’t see any exo schools there. It’s too dangerous, and they don’t want to come to the ape planet. Exo schools stay at home and do sweet little excavations of settlements that are only a few hundred years old. You do get the occasional party from Military schools though, or even the Military Academy. It’s a good place for them to practise wearing impact suits and using equipment, while doing something useful at the same time.
I’d decided it was safe to mention my experience on New York Fringe to the class, since it was quite believable that a Military kid had been there. I’d have to keep quiet about some of the details though, especially getting my pilot’s licence there last summer, because being a pilot was too unusual. There might be a survey plane tucked at the back of all those hover sleds in the storage dome, but I couldn’t fly it while pretending to be Jarra the Military kid.
I sulked briefly about the flying, but entering New York Main was too exciting to waste time in a bad mood. Fringe was just a children’s playground compared to this. I’d scanned all the information, and heard all the stories about New York Main. It’s a lot more interesting than Fringe, with far more stasis boxes around, but it’s also much more dangerous. They don’t let you in until you’re 18, however much you try, and believe me I tried as hard as I could. It’s not for kids, and it’s not for amateurs. New York Main is for the professionals. I’d been waiting for this for years, and I was going in!
‘We’re following the clearway,’ said Playdon. ‘The clearways are literally clear routes through the dig site. They were made by the first excavation teams a hundred and fifty years ago. The rubble on them has been crushed and sometimes fused together. The ground beneath them is stable and has been checked for hazards. You’ll see glowing markers at each side of the clearway guiding you. Remember in emergency that the green arrows always point you to the shortest route off the dig site. They’re especially useful if there is sudden snow or fog and visibility is low.’
Everyone looked round at the ruins. We were passing blackened sections of walls, some only head height, others still many storeys high. Broken remnants of floors jutted out. Huge blocks of concrete lay around, as if some giant child had tossed aside his toy building blocks in a tantrum. One huge girder, orange with the rust of the ages, leant against a blackened wall.
‘We’re stopping here.’ Playdon spoke over the team circuit as we reached a flatter area. ‘Park the sleds this side of the clearway in case other teams need to drive by.’
I looked round at our work site. The team that had worked it before us had obviously taken down any dangerous buildings. Shame. Blowing up walls was fun. I thought I could guess where they’d found the stasis box. There was a nice cleared area with a central depression, just the way a good tag leader would have dug out a box.
‘Now,’ said Playdon, ‘on a dig team, there are five roles. The team leader is in overall charge, and that’s obviously me. The others are tag leader, tag support, sensor, and lift. Tag leader is the dangerous job, because they’re the only person who enters the excavation area. They direct operations on the ground, decide how to clear the rubble, tag rocks, and guide the people working the lifting gear.’
I knew all about tag leaders, because I’ve always been a tag leader for my school history club. Well, not back when I was 11, because my history teacher flatly refused to have an 11-year-old tag leading, and put me on the heavy lifting gear. That was better than nothing of course, but I still hated having to wait around for a couple of years for the job I really wanted. It was so frustrating watching other people tag leading, and having to follow their instructions even when they were wrong. Still, I got to be tag leader when I was 13, and I’ve done it ever since.
I was determined to be tag leader now as well. I’d worked hard for years to learn the right skills. Even if I was an ape girl, I was a great tag leader, and if I could just get the chance then Playdon would see that. I was worried whether I’d ever get that chance though. A grim truth had occurred to me. He’d shut me out of driving the sleds by not picking me, and he could shut me out of tag leading just as easily. He could even make me sit on a transport sled and watch the others on this and every other trip on to the site. What would I do then? I’d go crazy having to sit and watch day after day.
I couldn’t scream abuse at the norms and walk out. The point was to do that when I’d proved I was as good as them. Doing it then would be a success. Doing it now … Well, it would be admitting I’d failed.
‘Next, we have tag support.’ Playdon continued. ‘The tag leader is working in dangerous conditions, so tag support’s job is to keep them safe. Your impact suits have a tag point at the back. Draw a line between your shoulder blades, and dead centre is the tag point. Tag support have a lift beam locked on the tag point of the tag leader’s impact suit. We often call it the lifeline; a term dating back far into pre-history. If the tag leader is going to be hit by a rock, fall into an underground hole, or be eaten by a bear, then tag support uses their lift beam and pulls the tag leader to safety, and sometimes they have to react very fast.’
If I did get my chance at tag leading then I felt that tag support was going to be a problem. When you’re tag leading, you want to have confidence in the person on your lifeline, so you can relax and concentrate on your job. I was on my own here with a bunch of exos, and I didn’t fancy trusting an exo with my life. I didn’t have much choice though. It was that or stand around watching someone else tag lead, and I hate watching.
‘You would normally only have one tag leader in an area,’ said Playdon, ‘since two tag leaders working at cross purposes could be very dangerous. That means one tag support as well. We usually have one person on the sensors, scanning the site for hazards, and hopefully for interesting things like stasis boxes. If they spot anything nasty happening, they hit the alarm and tag support pull out the tag leader fast.’
‘Finally we have one or more people manning the heavy lift sleds, using beams to move the tagged rubble. Most of our equipment is Military issue, but the heavy lift sleds are standard construction site ones. Today we’ll have two people using heavy lift gear. Any questions?’ Playdon asked.
‘Erm,’ said the hesitant voice of one of the Gamman boys. ‘I don’t understand … I was on a dig on Asgard and … It was rather different. We used sensors, teaspoons, and little brushes.’
I was pretty anxious at this point, but I still couldn’t help giggling.
‘Well,’ said Playdon, ‘that was a little different. Where you have a very rare and precious site, and plenty of time, you work that way. Earth is different. It has more ruined cities than you could possibly believe. We’d make no impression on New York working with teaspoons and we have limited people and time. Just look at it!’
I didn’t need to look at it. I was still giggling at the idea of excavating New York with teaspoons.
‘If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year, do you suppose, the Walrus said, that they could get it clear?’ It was Dalmora’s voice, and I didn’t know why she was talking about walruses.
I was startled when Lolia responded. ‘I doubt it, said the Carpenter, and shed a bitter tear.’
‘I’m sorry?’ asked Playdon.
‘It’s an ancient poem,’ said Dalmora.
‘Lewis Carroll,’ said Lolia. ‘He’s amaz. I specialized in art of language at school.’
‘I see.’ Playdon sounded no wiser than I was. ‘Well, we have no time for teaspoons. Even searching this one city is a colossal task, and we have thousands. Time is running out for buried items, even the stasis boxes have limited power, so we get what we can, as fast as we can, before it’s too late.’
‘So, let’s get searching,’ said Playdon, briskly. ‘Five of you will be doing things, while the rest sit on the transport sleds and watch carefully. Who fancies the dangerous job of tag leader?’
This was it. I had my hand up instantly, and looked round fast for the competition. There wasn’t any. No one else had their hands up at all, so Playdon could hardly ignore me, could he? If he did, then the writing was on the wall. The ape girl would never be given a chance, whatever happened, and I might as well pack my bags and leave.
‘All right.’ Playdon didn’t seem thrilled. ‘Jarra will be tag leader.’
Hoo eee! I was tag leader!
Playdon got a tag gun and hover belt out of an equipment box, and handed them to me. ‘This is a tag gun, Jarra. It burns an electronic tag into the rocks. Try to choose the …’
‘I’m familiar with it, sir,’ I said. I snapped on the hover belt, checked the settings on the tag gun, and fixed it on the belt.
‘Remember the hover belt keeps you a fixed distance above the ground, but when the ground shifts …’
‘I know, sir,’ I said
‘You’ll need to head over to the tag support sled and wait for your tag support to …’
‘Lock my tag point. Yes, sir.’ I activated my hover belt and zoomed eagerly over to the tag support sled.
One of the fringe benefits of being tag leader is you get a hover belt, and don’t have to mess around walking on the clearway. When they made the clearways, they crushed the rubble, but it didn’t end up anything like the perfect fused surface you walk around on in settlements. It’s hard work to walk on.
After I whooshed off, Playdon gave a heavy sigh, and then carried on talking on the team circuit. ‘Do any of you have experience working heavy lifting gear?’
The selection process dragged on, while I waited impatiently to actually do something. I was going crazy listening to the endless chatting. I’d been working New York Fringe when I was 11. I’d waited seven long years to get my chance to work New York Main. Now I was here at last, and I was having to stand around listening to Dalmora explain that she’d used a lot of vid equipment, Fian talk about helping setting up equipment at a solar observatory, and Krath drivel on about lifting containers of garbage.
I felt like shouting aloud to them: Listen you dim norms, we’re standing in a dig site, how about we stop talking and dig? I didn’t though. I desperately wanted to keep the tag leader spot, and I had to behave myself and look good. I knew how this worked. This was my try out. If I messed up, Playdon would swap me for someone else. If I did well, then I’d be a permanent tag leader.
Normally I would have felt confident. I had plenty of experience. The others had none. I was bound to look impressive, but I was still a bag of nerves because of the ape issue. Would Playdon give me a fair chance at this? He’d been challenging me on my Military knowledge ever since I arrived, trying to make a fool of me in front of the class, but we’d been temporary allies when we were training the others on impact suits. Surely, that would count in my favour.
I had something else on my side as well. Playdon might not like apes, but he’d have to be a total fool if he swapped a good tag leader for a bad one. This was only a Foundation class, not a research team, but it was still important to find as many stasis boxes as possible. Each box had a chance of containing vital lost knowledge or artefacts. Any useful discovery helped humanity, but also earned a bounty payment in credits. My school history club had been limited to working Fringe dig sites, but still managed to pay most of its operating costs with the occasional bounty payments. University Asgard courses must have to think about finances as well.
Playdon finally decided to have Amalie and Krath on the lifting gear, a Gamman boy called Joth on my lifeline, and have Dalmora assist him on sensors. Playdon had to cover sensors himself as well as team lead, because learning to read sensors takes a long time.
When he had everyone in the right sleds, Playdon spent another century explaining all the controls to people. Next we set up the sensor net, which also took ages because Playdon demonstrated how to set up the sensor spikes, and placed all four of them himself. All the time, I waited tensely to get on with proving myself.
At long last, Joth locked his lifeline beam on to the tag point on the back of my suit. Whenever a beam locks on to my back, I get a funny feeling between my shoulder blades, like an itch that needs scratching. If I trust my tag support, then it goes away fast. With a novice exo on my lifeline, the itch wasn’t going away at all, it was actually getting worse. I’d been waiting a long time to be tag leader on New York Main, I was going to do this, but I was going to have to do it carefully. My itch was telling me that I couldn’t depend on my tag support.
I activated my hover belt and swooped across to the sensor sled to take a look at what we had. Playdon was already looking at the sensor displays and explaining them to Dalmora, so I went to stand next to them. First, I glanced at each of the six peripheral displays which signalled major hazards. Fire, electrical, chemical, water, radiation and magnetic. The last two are highly unlikely to record anything, but you have to pay attention fast if they detect anything because impact suits won’t help you against that stuff.
All of the hazard displays were clear. In the centre, the main display was weaving complex patterns. I could see the blob that might be a stasis box. The emphasis is on the ‘might be’ in that sentence. Stasis boxes are designed to preserve their contents for as long as possible while using the minimum power. That means there are no giveaway power signatures for sensors to pick up. It’s not so much a case of looking at sensors and seeing where a stasis box is, as a case of seeing all the places where one can’t possibly be.
‘It looks like it’s fairly deep,’ I said.
‘What is?’ asked Playdon.
I pointed to the blob. ‘The stasis box. If it is a stasis box.’
‘You’ve experience with sensors?’ asked Playdon.
Oh no, I thought. I didn’t want the sensor sled job. ‘Not really, sir. I just like a quick look to get an idea of the site before tag leading.’
I looked across at the stack of rubble that must be over the possible stasis box. The barely visible remains of a wall ran along at one side. It would probably have some very solid concrete foundations, so it would be tough to shift. Best not even to attempt to move it, because I could use those foundations to my advantage. Normally, you have to clear a wide area and work down layer by layer to keep the rubble nice and stable. In this case, I could save myself some work by only clearing up to the wall and trusting its foundations to stay stable and prevent any cave-in on that side.
There was a nice group of rocks that would be good practice for my novice lift controllers. I activated my hover belt again and swooped across to start work.
‘The working team will be speaking on team circuit,’ said Playdon. ‘The rest of you should keep that set to listen only so you don’t distract them with idle chatter. Jarra, you’d better start with …’
I tagged the first rock. If you want to get technical, they mostly aren’t rocks, but big chunks of concrete, concraz, or whatever. Frankly, I don’t really care. They’re big heavy lumps of debris that need shifting, and I call them rocks. My main concern is picking a nice solid place to tag them, since sometimes they can break into pieces when the lift beam picks them up. You look a pretty stupid tag leader if the lift beam breaks off a pebble and the main rock just sits there, but after a while you get a feel for the sweet spots to tag.
‘Yes, that group,’ said Playdon. ‘You obviously know what you’re doing.’
I tagged the next three rocks, and moved well back in the opposite direction to the wall. As I did so, something jerked at my back. I paused. ‘Joth, you don’t need to engage the lifeline beam unless I’m in trouble. I need to be free to move.’
‘Sorry,’ said Joth.
I backed to what should be a safe distance even with the most incompetent novices on the lifting gear.
‘I need the lifts to move the rocks directly away from me,’ I said. ‘In the direction that I’m facing now, beyond the wall, you can see a nice flat area with a hollow in the middle. That’s probably where they found the stasis box. No one will want to dig there again, so that’s a nice place to put our rubble.’
‘Jarra’s tagged the first four rocks for you,’ said Playdon. ‘Amalie, lock your beam on the first and shift it. Once it’s moving, then Krath take the next one. Keep alternating.’
They moved the rocks. Very, very slowly, but they moved them. My back was still itching hard.
The hum on my suit communications changed note. Playdon was talking on my private circuit. ‘I see you’ve done this before, Jarra.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I replied on the private circuit.
‘What are you planning to do with that wall?’
‘Keep it, sir. Nice stable barrier at that side.’
‘Good plan.’ The private circuit hum stopped.
I moved back to my group of rocks, using my hover belt to float just above the rubble. This area was an especially nasty mess of jagged lumps of concrete, with spears of broken glass sticking upwards. I had one hand on my hover belt controls, increasing my height to go over a lump of distorted metal that was blocking my path, when I felt another tug from the lifeline. It lifted me wildly high in the air over the distorted metal, and then suddenly dropped me on the other side.
The poor hover belt had cut out when it was out of operating distance of the ground. It cut back in again as it came back in range, but I was falling too fast by then. I hit the ground before it could stop me, and the impact suit triggered. Its material went suddenly rigid, protecting me from the spikes of glass, then the hover belt brought me back up above the ground again.
‘Jarra?’ Playdon’s voice demanded sharply. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m sorry,’ wailed Joth. ‘I thought the hover belt would lower her when I let go.’
The shock of the impact suit doing a full scale trigger always takes your breath away for a moment. I eventually managed to speak. ‘I’m all right.’
The impact suit material relaxed and I could move again. I floated my way across to a safer spot, where I could check myself, my suit, and my hover belt for damage. Hover belts are always vulnerable in a situation like that, but my checks showed this one had been lucky and missed being hit by the glass spikes.
‘Joth, you let Jarra go when she was way above the operating limit for the hover belt,’ said Playdon. ‘Fortunately, there’s no serious harm done, but remember that everyone. Hover belts have their limits. If a hole opened up in the ground beneath Jarra, or there was a landslide, she would fall just like she did just then.’
Playdon paused. ‘Jarra, check your hover belt and run suit diagnostics please. Hitting a pointed edge can cause damage.’
‘The belt is fine. The suit has already triggered an automatic test, sir,’ I said. If there was a grim edge to my Military calm voice when I said that, then it was justified. If the suit was running an automatic diagnostic test, then I’d landed dangerously hard on something sharp. The idea of having someone on tag support was to save me from things like that, not cause them.
‘We’ll wait a few minutes while that finishes then,’ said Playdon.
The hum on my suit comms told me that Playdon was back on my private circuit. ‘Sure you’re not hurt, Jarra?’
‘I’m sure, sir. I expect I’ll have the odd bruise from the impact suit triggering.’
‘Good, but that was potentially nasty. It wasn’t the first mistake either. I felt Joth was generally overeager and intervening too much. Would you agree?’
That was a polite way to say it. I could have said a few strong words about me being a tag leader and not a doll on the end of Joth’s beam. A good tag support shouldn’t do anything at all until their tag leader is in trouble. That’s when they act, and they act fast.
‘I’m afraid Joth gives me bad tag point itch, sir. Sorry, what I mean by that is …’
‘I know tag point itch, Jarra. If you’re experienced enough at tag leading to have that, then you’d better pick your own tag support. Who would you like on your lifeline?’
I thought rapidly. I didn’t know most of the names of the class. The Betans were no use. The Deltan, Fian, was intelligent and seemed to pay attention to things. I hadn’t been listening closely enough to the endless discussions about who knew what to remember if he was experienced with lift gear, but a tag support beam is easy enough to use. The critical qualities for a tag support are that they pay attention to their tag leader’s movements, and have the sense to know when they need to use the beam and when they don’t.
‘Fian, sir.’
‘Right,’ said Playdon. ‘I’ll do a little tactful shuffling of the team, to make it less obvious that I’m dropping Joth. I don’t like to hammer a student too hard on their first day on a dig site, but he isn’t tag support material.’
The hum changed as Playdon swapped back to team circuit. ‘While we’re waiting for Jarra’s suit diagnostic to finish, we’ll do a little shuffling. Amalie, hand over your lift sled to Dalmora for a while. Stay with her and make sure she knows how to use the controls. Fian, go on tag support. Joth, hand over tag support to Fian, and then come over to the sensor sled and take a look at the displays.’
People moved around.
‘Suit diagnostics have finished,’ I said. ‘It’s fine.’
‘Jarra, can you please come over to the tag support sled?’ said Fian. ‘I need to lock my beam on to your tag point.’
‘It should already be locked on,’ Playdon interrupted.
‘I’m not seeing the green light,’ said Fian.
‘I disconnected it before I swapped over with Fian,’ said Joth.
Right, I thought, bitterly. What nardle brain just disconnects the lifeline of a tag leader in the middle of a danger zone? The answer is an exo who wants to kill her. Honestly, I’d have been a lot safer with Lolia on my lifeline! I bit my lip to stop myself saying something extremely rude.
‘Jarra,’ said Playdon, ‘please pick the safest route back to the clearway and move cautiously.’
I floated my way carefully back to the clearway and headed over to the tag support sled.
Playdon was totally silent until I reached the clearway, and then he started talking. He didn’t shout, but the tone of his voice had everyone frozen and listening. ‘Basic site safety rules are that everyone works from the clearway when possible, failing that from a selected safe area. Only tag leaders enter the danger zone. A tag leader must have a lifeline attached, and their tag support sled manned continuously, while they’re in a danger zone. You never detach the lifeline from a tag leader in a danger area. You never leave a tag support sled unmanned when a tag leader is in a danger area. Is that clear?’
He paused. ‘Please wait everyone.’
Fian locked the lifeline beam on to the tag point of my suit, peered at his arm to check his comms settings, and whispered to me. ‘Did I get Joth into trouble?’
I set my team circuit to listen only while I whispered back. ‘No, Joth got himself into trouble. You couldn’t let me carry on working out there without a lifeline. If there’d been an accident …’
We all stood around in silence.
‘What are we waiting for?’ Fian whispered after a while.
‘I think Playdon’s talking to Joth on his private circuit,’ I said. My theory was that Playdon had changed his mind about hammering a student hard on their first day on site. Joth’s first mistake had been bad enough, but disconnecting the lifeline was criminally stupid.
Playdon finally returned to talking on the team circuit. ‘Jarra, please continue working when ready.’
I double-checked the green light on the tag support sled, just in case Fian was another homicidal maniac, and then swooped across the rubble to start tagging again. Things went nice and smoothly for a while, and I began to relax a bit. Fian wasn’t hampering my movements the way that Joth had done, and didn’t seem to be actively trying to kill me.
I was starting to wonder if Fian had fallen asleep, when there was a very minor rubble slippage. I skidded sideways as the hover belt got confused by the ground beneath me moving. The tug on my lifeline that stabilized me was only there for a second, and I was released the moment the hover belt recovered, but it told me that my tag support was alert and doing his job.
Playdon had one brief chat with me on my private circuit, and asked about my tag point itch. I said it was fading nicely, and Fian was a big improvement on Joth.
After a while, I reached the point where everything visible that was sizeable enough to be worth tagging had been shifted, and it was time to get rid of the layer of small debris smothering my working area. ‘Drag net time, please.’
I headed back to the clearway. It’s not totally necessary to go to the clearway while the heavy lifts do a drag net run, but it’s generally safer since things can get messy. After being tossed around like a rag doll on my lifeline earlier, I preferred not to take any chances.
Playdon moved Dalmora back to sit with him for more training on the sensors, and told Joth to take a break for a while. Joth rejoined the rest of the class who were sitting on the two big transport sleds and watching the show. I could imagine what he was thinking. He’d had a chance to make team 1 and blown it entirely. He could think himself lucky if he got a heavy lift spot for team 4, because he could well end up with the rejects in team 5 or 6. I felt a moment of sympathy for him, but only a short one.
Amalie and Krath each had a heavy lift sled to themselves again now. If I was Amalie, I’d be sighing with relief. She must have wondered if Playdon was thinking of giving her spot to Dalmora, but it was probably obvious to her now what had really been going on.
I suddenly realized that I was making too many assumptions here. These were a bunch of clueless exos. They wouldn’t have the faintest idea about team selection, or how important it was to be on team 1 or 2, or at worst team 3 or 4. If you got dumped with the dregs in team 5 or 6, then you were doomed to spend most of your dig site time sitting and watching the action rather than taking part in it.
Playdon started explaining the drag net phase to the class. Up until now, we’d been using heavy lift beams focused tightly and locked on a tag point to shift a single heavy object at a time. Now it was time to fan out the heavy lift beams, and drag them across the area to clear away the smaller rubble.
I went across to the tag support sled, which is where a tag leader is expected to be when not working the site, and watched the drag net in operation. Dust clouds swirled in the glow of the heavy lift beams, as the armies of tiny rubble bounced their way over to join the heap of rocks that the heavy lifts had dumped earlier. Most of the rubble was behaving itself, though the odd larger lump was bouncing around a little unpredictably. There are always a few awkward rocks that are too small to bother tagging, but are on the large size for the drag net.
‘Am I doing the right thing?’ asked Fian, nervously.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I even quit itching after a bit.’
‘What?’ he asked.
I didn’t have time to explain tag point itch, since they were ready for me to start tagging again. I headed back out, celebrating the fact that Playdon hadn’t taken advantage of my time out of the danger area to replace me and try someone else tag leading. I couldn’t underestimate the fact that he knew I was an ape, but surely I was safe as tag leader for at least team 2 or 3.
We made steady progress down through two more layers of rocks, and were nearly at the level of the possible stasis box. I was just tagging a large rock, or chunk of concraz if you’re pedantic about these things, when the sensor alarm shrieked. Playdon or Dalmora had hit the panic button.
I instinctively reached for my hover belt controls, but I was already shooting up in the air on the end of the lifeline beam, and swinging across towards the clearway. Something exploded back where I’d been working, sending huge rocks flying across my dig site, but I was already safely out of their reach, hanging high in the air above the tag support sled.
I hung there for a few seconds, before being gently lowered to the clearway next to the tag support sled. ‘Thanks for the save,’ I said, politely.
‘What the chaos was that?’ Fian’s stunned voice asked on the team circuit.
‘Probably a home power storage unit cracking open as the rubble shifted on it,’ said Playdon. ‘The ruins are full of them, but most have bled out safely over the years. You get the odd one that’s still dangerous, so if the sensors show an electrical spike building up you hit the panic button first and ask questions later. We’ll do some more scans before continuing.’
That meant a break of at least five minutes. I stretched out on the bench at the back of the tag support sled, as is tag leader’s privilege, and relaxed.
‘You all right?’ asked Fian.
‘Fine. You did well.’ He might be an exo, but it’s good manners to thank your tag support when they save you.
‘You’re sure you aren’t hurt?’
I laughed. ‘Not at all. Five minutes break to lie down and relax is blizz. It’s hard work out there in an impact suit.’
‘Things look clear on the sensors,’ said Playdon after a few minutes. ‘Jarra, take it cautiously, and see if you can spot the shell of that power unit. Remember there may still be some residual charge.’
I bounced back to my feet, and headed out again. I floated across the area slowly, looking out for the power unit casing. I finally spotted it, some distance away from the crater that marked the explosion. ‘Found it,’ I reported.
‘Don’t risk going in close to tag,’ warned Playdon.
‘Going for a distance shot, sir.’ I lined up the tag gun sight on the metal casing, and took a slow and careful shot. I got lucky and scored a direct hit.
‘Got it,’ I said, joyfully. There’s a lot of luck involved in distance shots with a tag gun, but it naturally looks good when you score a hit first time. Normally you go in close and tag things, because it’s far more accurate.
I backed well away, and Amalie carefully shifted the remains of the power unit to the far side of our rubbish heap. After that, I inspected how much havoc the explosion had caused on my nicely levelled dig site. It wasn’t too bad, and another fifteen minutes of work got us to the exciting moment when a large lump of concraz was lifted away from directly on top of what might be a stasis box. I floated over eagerly to take a look.
There it was, an oddly furry-looking blackness that was hard for the eyes to focus on. ‘I can see the side of it,’ I shouted. ‘We got a stasis box!’
Everyone cheered.
It took several more minutes to finish clearing rubble from the box, and attach the special harness so it could be moved over to one of the transport sleds. You can’t tag a stasis box directly. I don’t really understand the physics, but a stasis field is made up of lots of nothing. You can’t attach a tag to a nothing, you have to attach it to a something.
When we had our precious stasis box safely on the transport sled, I retrieved our sensor spikes, and we were finished. Fian unlocked my lifeline, and we moved across to a transport sled.
‘I don’t have to drive the tag support sled back?’ he asked.
I shook my head. ‘Working team doesn’t drive back, we ride.’ I stretched out on one of the bench seats. ‘We got a stasis box! Totally zan!’
7
We opened the stasis box after lunch. Totally amaz! Normally they’re taken away to be opened by experts, and you have to wait for the report on what was inside. We got to open our box ourselves, because Playdon was a Stasis Q!
We were all sitting in the dining hall when Playdon told us he had his licence. I was utterly grazzed. He might be an exo, but if he was Stasis Q then, well … respect! Playdon said he’d go back outside for a while to run the pre-checks on the stasis box, and I got my hand up in record time.
‘Yes, Jarra?’ asked Playdon.
‘Sir, requesting permission to come outside and watch.’ I held my breath.
‘You’ll have to stay well clear while I’m working.’
‘Understood, sir.’ Zan! I thought to myself. A chance to watch a Stasis Q running the pre-checks!
I planned to get my Stasis Qualification licence myself one day, and any previous experience would help me get a course place. You have to grab these chances when they’re offered. It’s like the flying. I didn’t just stroll up to a survey pilot when I was 17 and get him to teach me to fly. I’d started begging rides in the passenger seat when I was 12, I’d talked pilots into letting me handle the controls when I was 15, so when I was 17 it was just a question of getting my mandatory flying hours and solo licence.
‘Anyone else wildly keen to get back in an impact suit and come and watch?’ asked Playdon.
Fian was sitting at the same table as me, and gave me a confused look before putting his hand up. Amalie put her hand up too, closely followed by Dalmora, and then a hesitant Krath. The rest of the class just groaned at the thought of getting back into their suits.
I whizzed off to get into my impact suit, got it on in a new personal record time, and waited happily at the dome door for the others. Ten minutes later we were all outside, and Playdon was taking the stasis box well away from the dome and hover sleds to a nice clear area.
‘You can all sit on the transport sled and watch,’ he said on the team circuit, ‘but under no circumstances come any closer to me.’
He opened up an equipment box, took out a micro sensor ring, and began setting it up around the stasis box. I could tell by the speed he was working, that he’d done this a lot of times.
‘Excuse me,’ Fian whispered, ‘but why is it so great to watch this?’
‘Yes,’ said Krath. ‘What’s going on? My dad says you should never volunteer for anything, but I wanted to come along with Jarra and …’
‘This is amaz!’ I told them. ‘Don’t you realize, the stasis boxes are opened by experts, and you don’t usually get the chance to watch. I’m aiming to be a Stasis Q myself, so I can open my own boxes.’
‘Is it that hard to open a box?’ asked Amalie.
‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s easy to open them, but you have to check what’s inside first. Bad ones are rare, but …’
I shut up, because Playdon was talking over the team circuit. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a sensor ring set up round the box. I’m now putting a limiter on top of the box. That lets me gradually reduce the strength of the stasis field so I can make tests on what’s inside. First, I’m taking the field down two tenths and checking for radiation.’
‘Radiation?’ Dalmora sounded nervous.
‘People used these boxes to leave memorials in their old homes,’ I whispered, ‘but they were also used to store things, usually things that were either valuable or dangerous. Valuable is fine, but dangerous isn’t.’
Playdon gradually took the stasis field strength down, making a series of hazard checks. I was making careful mental notes of it all.
‘Everything looks clear,’ he said, ‘I now take the field strength down to just under ten per cent and run a quick sensor scan.’
There was a pause.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it looks like a standard memorial box, so I’ll pack up now and we can open it inside.’
I offered to help pack the equipment, and Playdon agreed since the box had been cleared as safe. We would find more stasis boxes in future. If I helped him pack up a few more times, he might allow me to help him with the setting up, and from that to helping run the tests was only a short step.
We went back into the dome. I took off my impact suit, did a bit of fast research on my lookup, and went into the dining hall with my head buzzing with plans. I might be able to cover part of the Stasis Q course from vids and working with Playdon, but I’d need to go on a formal course for several weeks, and then there were theory and practical exams. From what I’d hastily read, the tests were tough. Any error meant a complete failure, because opening a real stasis box with a hazard inside might kill you.
Playdon came into the dining hall, and put the stasis box on a table. We all gathered expectantly round, and he held up something to show us. ‘This is a stasis box key. It collapses the stasis field and releases the contents. They’re easy to use, but you never open a box yourselves. Boxes have to be checked and opened by qualified people, in case there’s something like a nuclear warhead inside.’
Krath gulped. ‘Have you ever found one of those?’
‘Not personally,’ said Playdon. ‘I have found radioactive materials in a stasis box, and the last aerial survey of New York Main dig site showed up two new radioactive hotspots that probably came from failed stasis boxes releasing their contents. They’re well clear of current working areas, but Dig Site Command may need to get them cleared up in the future.’
‘Fortunately,’ he continued, ‘my tests show this looks like a perfectly ordinary memorial box, so let’s see what we’ve got.’
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